The Associated Press

PEEBLES, Ohio - The mosaic hues draw visitors to barns along meandering highways in rural southern Ohio.

The arrangement of red and green triangles on Richard Shoemaker's barn reminds people of their grandmothers, he said. It's one of 20 paintings of quilt patterns along roads in Adams County, part of a project that county tourism officials organized in 2001.

"It's called Dutchman's Puzzle, and I'm not going to pretend to tell you what that means," Shoemaker said of the design at his nursery.

Some of the 10-by-10-foot paintings appear on the weatherbeaten walls of old wooden barns. Others have been painted on canvas and hung from metal barns.

Drivers can see them along Ohio 32 and U.S. 52, roads that cut across the southern Ohio county east of Cincinnati.

Donna Sue Groves was inspired to start the project by her 76-year-old mother's quilting. She developed the idea with county tourism officials as a way to interest people in the art of quilting by using a style popularized by old tobacco ads on barns, she said.

"Quilting gave women an opportunity for self-expression," she said.

The last of the 20 paintings - all traditional styles using triangles and squares - is to be finished this summer.

In addition to the project, several barn owners have decided to paint quilt patterns on their own barns.

Two paintings at Steve Boehme's GoodSeed Farm outside Peebles bring more visitors to his business, he said.

"At the same time they're seeing the barns, they're seeing the county and finding buried treasures," he said.

Officials in Monroe County in eastern Ohio started planning in March for a similar project, the county's tourism director, Stephanie Rouse, said. Five barns have been painted.

Ohio bicentennial barn painter Scott Hagan has been commissioned for the Monroe County project.

"We need to draw people into the county, and we have a rich agricultural history with the barns," Rouse said.