Applique Quilt

Art Historical Context

This watercolor, gouache, and graphite rendering by Ruth M. Barnes, created around 1940, vividly documents an appliqué quilt as part of the Index of American Design. The original quilt measured a generous 92 inches square, while Barnes’s precise illustration on paper captures its patterns in a compact 14-by-10-inch format. Produced during the Great Depression, the Index employed artists to record America’s folk and decorative arts, preserving everyday objects that might otherwise have been lost. Barnes’s mixed-media technique allowed for luminous color and fine detail, faithfully translating ...

About the Artist

Ruth M. Barnes

Ruth M. Barnes (1880–1954) was an American artist best known for her meticulous watercolor renderings of traditional American folk textiles as part of the Index of American Design, a Federal Art Project under the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Active during the Great Depression era from roughly 1935 to 1942, Barnes contributed dozens of detailed studies to this ambitious initiative, which em...