The concept of the painted "Barn Quilts" - like the one in
Columbia, KY pictured above - goes back to the old traditional hex signs on the barns of the Pennsylvania Dutch, but the contemporary craze was started just a few years ago by a West Virginia woman named Donna Sue Groves. Reportedly, Groves began the project by painting a barn quilt in tribute to her mother, then just kept going with it via the Ohio Arts Council, encouraging more and more people to follow suit.
The
Kentucky Quilt Trail is actually a related series of routes that are good places to gawk at barn quilts, all in the general area between Mt. Sterling, West Liberty, and Greenup. Trails travel through eight Eastern Kentucky counties in all: Montgomery, Menifee, Morgan, Bath, Rowan, Carter, Elliott, and Greenup.
Below: barn quilt in
Dry Ridge, KY.
