Melissa Drury has a basem*nt studio at her home where she pours her "heart and soul" into her passion – colorful barn quilt squares that adorn the sides of buildings across rural Kentucky.
Drury, a painter based out of Lawrenceburg, had been making barn quilt squares for about three years after being inspired by the paintings on barns near her home. Now, her works can be seen on buildings across the county, and it's all inspired by Kentucky's original barn quilt trail movement.
Barn quilts are an artistic tradition for many in the commonwealth and can be as varied in color, pattern and symbolism as the families they represent. And the painted versions of traditional quilts , Kentucky Arts Council Executive Director Chris Cathers said, can bring communities together – they work together to create them, often in tandem with a Cooperative Extension Office, and the finished products to proudly display a connection to culture and history.
The history behind the art
Before it spread into Kentucky, the passion behind the barn quilt trail was born out of Adams County, Ohio, by Donna Sue Groves, a member of the Ohio Arts Council at the time. Barn quilt trails are loosely organized collections of barn quilt locations in a specific area, often put together by county officials.
Groves realized the project could bring tourists to her community, according to a webpage dedicated to the movement from author and enthusiast Suzi Parron. Plans for a "clothesline of quilts" were formed and later executed by residents of Adams County, on the border of the Ohio River east of Cincinnati.
Since then, counties across Kentucky have developed their own grassroots committees to spearhead the creation of barn quilts.
Kayla Speis, communications director at the Murray Convention and Visitors Center, said residents joined Ruth Dodd in 2010 when she started organizing the creation of barn quilts alongside the Calloway County Extension Homemakers Association to attract tourists to the small city in Western Kentucky.
The barn quilters set up shop in a garage to start work on their own version of the project, Speis said, and it didn't take long for the community to buy in.
"Before we knew it, everybody wanted a piece of the pie, right? They wanted to have a barn quilt close to their home or on their business or on their land," she said.
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The committee that started barn quilts in Murray is no longer active, but the quilt trail map is still available on the city's tourism website. Calloway County has one of the largest quilt trails in the region with more than 60 recorded locations.
Cathers began working with the barn quilt trail movement when he was a project manager in tourism at Eastern Kentucky University in the early 2000s. Quilting is historically a social activity, he said, which plays into barn quilt painting's role as a community activity.
Quilting bees, when groups of homemakers got together and used the time to complete quilting projects, were popular in the 19th century and gave participants a chance to "exchange news, recipes, home remedies, fabric scraps, and personal problems, and to learn new skills and teach their daughters, all in a mutually supportive way," according to "The Social History of Quilt Making in America." And "Codeswitch," a 2022 Speed Art Museum exhibit from artist Stanford Biggers, explored the debated notion that quilting may also have been used to assist slaves following Underground Railroad routes.
A rich tradition of quilting in Kentucky has lent itself to the modern public art form – and Cathers said that's what makes barn quilts so valuable to local culture.
"You see people in a community being motivated by this art project and this display of public art, and then connecting it through culture or connecting it through history in their communities or with families and then utilizing the resources that are there in their community to make it happen," Cathers said. "... It has its own special kind of magic."
An artist's personal touch
Barn quilts usually feature bright colors, complicated patterns and symbolism. Drury said clients in Lawrenceburg often ask her to replicate traditional patterns from physical quilts.
Some themes in barn quilt squares reflect the surrounding environment, Drury said. In Kentucky, that could vary from mountains in Eastern Kentucky to rolling hills in Central Kentucky to flatter landscapes and tobacco fields in Western Kentucky, and designs that represent protection for their crops or even fertility for animals or families.
Colors follow suit, Drury said – they can be as simple as a reflection of the natural world or more complex, like the quilt square she painted for a family that used the grandchildren's birthstones as the color palette.
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Pieces Drury makes are personal to the client, she said. She works with them to find colors and patterns they like the best.
Drury said she's often commissioned to paint barn quilts for weddings and holidays, so the client may want a pattern that represents something specific to them. One square Drury painted, for instance, was called "Love's Blossom," which she said aimed to mimic the "greenery" that a new family saw when they looked out on their farm.
One of Drury's favorite creations was based on the double wedding ring pattern, made up of interlocking circles.
She put her own spin on the pattern after a client requested it, she said, incorporating themes from the art of old-fashioned quilting inspired by her grandmother, like little Dutch boys and girls, as well as suggestions from the client and friends. The moon, for example, symbolizes the moonbow, a lunar rainbow that happens at Cumberland Falls State Park.
Today, Drury's double wedding ring painting hangs on the front of her client's home.
"What an honor... to be able to do that," Drury said.
Contact reporter Rae Johnson at RNJohnson@gannett.com. Follow them on Twitter at @RaeJ_33.
