We've Been Doing A Little "Quilting"!

Several months ago,  we decided that Arrow needed to participate in a local community tradition - barn quilts.  Even though we don't technically work in a barn, we were interested in having a “Barn Quilt” mounted on our building, and we had a contest to select the block.  The winner, Brenda Gleiter, sent in the winning design - the Silver Maple design, a traditional block from Electric Quilt library. “We loved the fact that the design had 4 Arrows, which we interpret to represent the 4 different divisions of Arrow Companies,” said Hether Miles-Fiess, Division Manager at Arrow. “Besides manufacturing sewing cabinets since 1943, Arrow also has an EDI Service Bureau, a Fulfillment and Distribution Center and an IT On Demand Computer Support Division.” Well, after a lot of preparation, we're proud to announce that the “Arrow Barn Quilt” has finally been unveiled!

Arrow staff members Bill Walser, Jo Jacobi and Hether Miles-Fiess spent the hot summer days layering oil base primer and paints onto the 8' x 8’ structure. 

Thankfully, Jo is an expert quilter and came to the rescue when Bill came in and said he needed to make the arrows smaller to fit on the board! Jo immediately took over and solved the problem, as only a quilter who has created thousands of smaller quilt blocks could.

“After launching the contest on our Facebook page in May and picking the winner, we never thought it would take 4 months to get our 8' x 8' quilt block on the side of the building,” said Hether.  “When we started the project we began to look for places on the building where we could mount the large plywood structure securely and safely, but we never imagined we would find the stucco of our building peeling away.  After an extensive building overhaul where all the stucco was removed, new stucco put back in place, new aluminum siding and gutters added and a fresh coat of paint topped it all off,  we were quite frankly afraid to put any holes into the new siding to hang our block!

 
In the end it was all worth it, and we feel that the final result is a bright and cheerful reflection of our business, our industry and certainly the heritage of quilt blocks on barns.  If you are ever in the area, stop by and check out our block!"