"Quilts on Barns"

You’ve probably seen a barnraising quilt, but have you ever seen a quilt-raising barn? If you live in farming country, you’re going to see more and more of them, thanks to Donna Sue Groves of Adams County, Ohio.

In 2001, Donna Sue came up with a unique present for her mother, master quilter Nina Maxine Groves. Besides quilts, Nina Maxine and Donna Sue had always shared a fondness for barns. "When I was a child in West Virginia, my mother kept a backseat full of children from getting antsy on long car trips by playing the 'barn game.' We counted the various styles of barns -- bank barns, corn cribs, milk barns, whether they were painted or not, and discussed the ethnicity of those who built them. Our father also loved to photograph them."

After living elsewhere for a number of decades, the widowed Nina Maxine retired and moved back to the Ohio River valley in 1989. Donna Sue was nearing the end of her term as City Commissioner of Xenia, Ohio and her son was now grown, so she decided to join her mother. Together, they bought a 30-acre property with a barn on it.

"Someday, I’m going to paint you a quilt square on that barn," Donna Sue told her mother. "What a great idea," people would say. Then in January, 2001, her friend Pete Whan of The Nature Conservancy offered to help. The first goal was to paint two giant quilt blocks, but the project quickly took off. "As soon as the first two squares were up, the calls started coming," recalls Donna Sue. They realized they could use quilt squares and barns to create public art as well as an economic community in the Appalachian area. A grassroots committee quickly formed, made up of artists, barn owners, quilters, tourism representatives, and community members. They soon got support from the Adams County Economic Development Director, Elaine Collins." People were asked to sit on planning and designing committees that had never been asked before," says Donna Sue. "It was wonderful. We paired up quilters with visual design painters. The recognition that 'women’s work' was also art was fabulous."

But how many barns did they need? Nina Maxine decided that a sampler quilt usually has twenty blocks, so that was their goal. Donna Sue’s experience as a member of the Ohio Arts Council was useful in writing a grant proposal. "We received a $2000 grant to jump-start the first six squares. The rest of the funding was donations of paint and lumber. Then a local Chamber of Commerce invested $4000, and the Nature Conservancy donated funds. Each barn cost an average of $200 to $350 with a fee going to the artist, and the property owners agreed to pay 10% of that." Volunteers researched appropriate block designs, located willing barn owners, and designed a "clothesline" trail through the countryside.

Continued...

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