The next time you endeavor to stray off the Bluegrass State’s major thoroughfares and venture onto its rich back roads, be sure to keep your eyes peeled: darting minnows and whirling pinwheels are everywhere.
The colorful patterns are part of the Eastern Kentucky Quilt Trail, a network of brightly painted quilt squares that honors the region’s storied quilting heritage. Just as reflective of the area’s culture are the structures on which many of the massive works of art are painted: old tobacco barns.
While such eye-catching patterns as Grandmother’s Flower Garden and The Miller’s Daughter are now proud parts of Eastern Kentucky’s rolling, rural landscape, the original idea actually sprang from the mind of an Ohioan who grew up in West Virginia. After Donna Sue Groves, a field representative for the Ohio Arts Council, paid tribute to her family’s quilting legacy by painting a pattern on a barn in Adams County, the attractive work was recognized as an inventive way to draw tourists to the area. A number of quilt trails have since been developed around Ohio.
The Kentucky Quilt Trail has four trails, with at least 200 quilt squares on barns in eight counties. (The Elliott County trail alone has 62 of them.) More quilt barns may be seen on the state’s Ashland, Boyd County and Catlettsburg Quilt Alley, a segment of the Kentucky Quilt Trail, itself part of the National Quilt Barn Trail. The trail now wends it way from Ohio to Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, North Carolina, Iowa and beyond, spreading beautiful imagery and honoring culture, one barn at a time.