Barn quilt.....a finish???

The barn quilt may be finished, but I'm not certain that it is.  Oh, it's quilted and bound, but I feel that there's still something it's trying to say.  Only, I'm hearing it in whispers that are a bit too soft to understand.

Regardless, I'm going to post it and call it done for a while. Especially since I don't quite understand what it wants. Maybe seeing it in pictures will clarify the thoughts.  Let's hope, anyway.

For those of you who are new or haven't kept up with posts, this is a quilt that I've been working on for a while based on a photograph of my parents' old barn.  I wrote about it a couple of times: you can find the first post here and another one here.  Here are a few close-ups of some of the details.  I've added hand-painting below the barn to represent the dirt, grass and weeds that were normally there.

 

On the right side near the edge, I added a tree limb with a rope swing.  When our oldest son saw the quilt, he said I needed to add the swing because Grandpa always had that swing there for them to play.  I agreed but didn't want it to detract from the front of the barn, so we decided to place the swing a bit off-center, taking advantage of the angle and thinking that, since this swing is just a representation to jog the memory, it can be in the quilt but not placed to scale. 

 

I have to admit that it works quite well this way.  I even raveled the end of the rope and fought to get the knot big enough yet still be able to stitch it down.

After I painted in the mud and grass, I realized that the quilted chickens and calves are even more difficult to see.  Oops.  I really can't do much about that now, but I like the mixed media results so much that I don't want to remove or change the paint anyway.

 

 

So, it may not be finished, but I know I'm getting very close.  If only I could hear the whisperings and make out what the quilt is trying to say.  If you hear it, please let me know what is said.  I'd love to complete the quilt.