Halo creative viewers, and welcome to A Journey through Aesthetic Realms on Supreme Master Television.

Today and in the following week, we will present a two-part series featuring the age-old and cherished American tradition of quilting. Quilting, or sewing several layers of fabrics together to make a padded material, has been practiced as far back as the 1st century.

Since European settlers brought the practice to the American continent, it has become part of everyday life, evolving through many generations of quilters into a form of artistic expression. The Pajaro Valley Quilt Association was founded by a group of women in 1978, and has become one of the largest guilds in the United States with over 400 members. Its mission is to encourage the art of quilt making and quilt preservation. The 32nd annual quilt show of the Pajaro Valley Quilt Association was held in Watsonville, California, USA.

Hi, thank you for having me here. My name is Mike McNamara. I go by Mac. I'm the president of my guild. It's a great guild. We have great traditional quilt makers and a lot of innovative quilt makers and it's a great mix of people and we have a wonderful, beautiful day for our quilt show.

The quilt show features a dazzlingly rich array of colors, patterns, and textures. Each piece is the product of thoughtful planning, diligent acquiring of materials, and hours of working with concentration and love. Every quilt has a unique story.

My name is ellen edith and I specialize in telling funny family stories in quilt form. So for instance this is Grandmother Ellen, and she was a wonderful very vivacious young grandmother, and she taught us how to walk on stilts. And I like to use vintage pieces, so I actually used a real apron that she made and I took the little pocket off that she had made on her treadle sewing machine, and I handmade it down to scale, so this apron is a vintage piece off an apron she made for herself. It’s like a wonderful memento of my family for me.

Quilting as an American cultural tradition stemmed out of necessity, as small groups of settlers traveled across the harsh wild plains. Sandy Shikiuma, the founder and first president of the Pajaro Valley Quilt Association, shared with us a quote from the letter of a pioneer woman which poignantly describes this aspect of their lives.

“We made our quilts as fast as we could so our families wouldn’t freeze and as beautiful as we could so our hearts wouldn’t break.” And that’s what it’s about.

Women traditionally quilted out of need, because you needed to provide bedding, you needed to make something utilitarian. I look back when my grandma was a quilter, she was making bed quilts and that’s what you did to keep your family warm.

Over the centuries, quilts found their way from bed tops to walls as their purpose developed from being purely practical to also being artistic.

So I think that it’s gone a long way. And just in the last 35 years, especially since early 70s, it really has taken off as far as individual expression. People started designing their own quilt pieces and making it something different and really looking at it more as an art.

I started a children’s quilt with some brightly colored scraps. And I just made a bunch of these units which are called the “four patch” and sewed those together. And then this is called the “half-square triangle” and I made a bunch of these. And then I just started playing around and making different designs. So I just brought this as an example. But if you turned this, this way, you get a totally different effect. So you can play around until you come up with a design you like. Here’s another example of what you can do with “half-square triangles.” And then here are the same exact ones, arranged a different way.

Our show on quilts and quilting will continue after these messages. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

I put a lot of fun in them, a lot of heartfelt meaning in my quilts. And I think of the person I'm making them for and I say, “I think she's going to enjoy this.”

Welcome back to A Journey through Aesthetic Realms on Supreme Master Television. Today, many people in the United States and abroad have found quilting to be a wonderful outlet for creativity, a source of social support and friendship, a sense of accomplishment, relaxation and joy. Ms. Sandy Shikiuma, the founder and first president of the Pajaro Valley Quilt Association, recounts how her group was formed.

I belonged to a small quilt group, twelve women; we met in each other’s homes. There was an article about my group in the paper, and so many of us were stopped on the street, “Oh, can I join your quilt group? I just have been looking for something like that.” So I got the idea to have some public group, where everybody could come and get together and talk about quilts and quilt making. And it took off from there. I was the first president. I’m so proud of how it has developed.

Many of the quilters of the Pajaro Valley Quilt Association have a long family tradition of quilt making.

My great, great grandmother, we finally found out that not only did she sew and make clothing, she also dyed fabric. My grandmother quilted, my mom stitched, and my aunt quilted. I actually thought everybody quilted, I was so shocked when I discovered that everybody didn’t quilt. So the quilts have always been in my life.

Other members of the quilt association, however, were newcomers to the art form.

It has really brought out the inner creative me. My background is nutrition, and it’s a real leap to go from the science of nutrition to being a creative artist, a fiber artist. So I think I’ve grown tremendously.

To me it was just wonderful to come into a group of women that were so creative, and we shared this interest.

And it’s been on many levels really enriching.

It is important to note that not all quilters are women.

I don't think of people being men or women, we're all just quilt makers. And I just happened to say, "I can make one of those." And I made a quilt back in 1976 and my mom said, “Well, let's get this old machine fired up,” and I've been making quilts ever since.

Mr. Mike McNamara enjoys surprising his friends by making quilts for them. They only find out when they read the tag next to the finished quilt.

Gita is a wonderful woman, a dear friend of mine. She really enjoys blue so I put a bunch of blue fabrics together for her quilt. And I used a technique that I learned from Nancy Crow which is called curved piercing. And curved piercing is where you literally take curved pieces of fabric and sew them together, iron them out and they lie nice and flat. And it's a technique that I teach as well and it's a whole lot of fun. So I really tried to make my curved piercing technique even more pronounced by taking long pieces of fabric and curve piercing them together, instead of just short pieces which is easier to do.

And then I used this technique called magic square where you just cut up a square such that you interlock these pieces, and I just added those along the bottom, large whole cloth pieces. And then you have a piece like this which is a leftover, these goofy little dandelions. They're actually supposed to be singing because on the back of this quilt that I made, you can see the dandelions singing and that's just the back of the other one. I thought it was really kind of fun because instead of looking like they're singing, they look they're screaming because they came out too early because they're in this frosty Arctic frozen tree landscapes. I just like the juxtaposition of fun like that.

From traditional to whimsical, simple to complex, the possibilities in quilting are endless. This quilt was honored “Best of the World” at the Mancuso Brothers’ 2009 Annual World Quilt Show.

I am Meri Henriques Vahl. This is my quilt, “Flower Market at Chichicastenango Guatemala.” I made this inspired by two trips that I’ve taken there. It’s all laid out on fabric batting and just cut with scissors. Some of the pieces are Guatemala textiles, some of them are pieces of old Guatemalan belts and huipils, those are the blouses that the women there wear. This would be a huipil. And you just take different pieces and lay them out and when you’ve got your design the way you want it, you put a piece of black tulle over it which is a very fine netting.

You put a lot of pins in to hold everything in place while you then work on it with free motion quilting.

And after that, any stitching you do basically is trapping whatever fabric you’ve put there. So you don’t have to exactly sew on it. This was a piece of fabric that I had, that had big roses on it, but it also had little flower, so I cut hundreds of them out, put them down here. I ended up going around the flowers, which actually brought out more colors in them than was there originally. This border is pieced out of Guatemala fabrics and in triangles.

One growing trend in the world of quilting is that creations are made to be both useful and artistic. This is well reflected in the genre of wearable art.

My name is Rachel Clark, and I got into doing garments because I do clothing. And when I was doing clothing I would miss the quilt making, and when I do the quilt making I would miss the clothing. So one morning I just decided why not marry the two? And so I just do clothing using quilt making techniques to create garments.

This is what happens when you walk into a store and you see fabric. Now, I walked in and I saw this wonderful brown and turquoise, and they had three pieces. So I bought three pieces and I said, I want to make myself a tiered skirt.

And then, I said, Okay. When I make the tiered skirt, I always make the big shirt. But I said, But this time, I’m not going to make the big shirt. I’m going to make a capelet to go with it. So I made the capelet to go with it. I went into another store, and they had more brown fabric and turquoise, so I thought, Why not go ahead and make the big shirt?

Now, I’m looking at this thinking, well, you know what, I still have a pile of that fabric left. So I thought, why not make a purse? So, I made a purse, to wear it. Now, I thought it was just a little bit over the top. But, I went to a quilt show, and I carried the purse, I wore the shirt and the skirt. But then that evening I got a little cool and I threw my cape over, and I would say it was a little over done. But people kept coming up to me saying, “Oh! That looks fabulous. What pattern did you use?” So, I’m not sure that you could overdo stuff for quilters!

We thank the Pajaro Valley Quilt Association and all participants at the quilt show for brightening our world with your charming craft that is so full of love and joy.

For more information about the Pajaro Valley Quilt Association, please visit

Graceful viewers, thank you for being with us today on A Journey through Aesthetic Realms on Supreme Master Television. Please join us next week as our program continues with more about the fascinating American tradition of quilting. Up next is Vegetarianism: The Noble Way of Living, after Noteworthy News. May the path of your life be adorned with smiles and blessed by God’s love.

With an ever growing demand for eco-friendly cars, manufacturers across the globe are working on innovative solutions and are presenting their latest models on prestigious exhibitions.

For Chevrolet, our focus is delivering vehicles that are gasoline-friendly, all the way to gasoline-free. And we employ a few key technologies: improving internal combustion engines, the use of biofuels, hybrids, hydrogen fuel cells electrification of the vehicle.

Join us Friday, May 14 on Golden Age Technology for part two of Supreme Master Television’s overview of this year’s Geneva International Motor Show and New York International Auto Show.

Greetings intuitive viewers, and welcome to a Journey through Aesthetic Realms on Supreme Master Television. Recently, the Pajaro Valley Quilt Association held its 32nd annual quilt show in Watsonville, California, USA. Today, let’s find out about the some of the techniques of quilt making and meet more of the wonderful people who create the beautiful and often innovative artworks.

My most famous pattern is Bento Box, and that pattern has been out since 2003. What I do is I take pieces of fabric that I happen to like and I cut them up into squares, circles, triangles, try to make something that’s pleasing to me. And then what happens, I can write the directions and other people who like my quilts will come and buy the patterns.

Fabric selection is the first step in quilt making. Quilters can choose from a wide selection of ethnic, artistic, or memorial materials. These often reflect one’s cultural background, aesthetic value, or family history, and may use old or modern technologies.

I took a class, “Piecing with Pixels” Sandy Hart, and it’s where you take photographs and scan them into Photoshop, and then you use the filters and you make the different pieces of fabric. A lot of people, they’ll choose their vacation photos or flowers or their children.

Over the past decades, a technique known as crazy quilting has received renewed interest. Let’s find out more about this traditional style with widely renowned quilter Ms. Allison Aller, who specializes in crazy quilting.

Crazy quilting uses a lot of different kinds of fabrics, not just cotton. Crazy quilting has an element of random piecing to it. And crazy quilting has embroidery stitches between these patches of fabric. Those are the three main elements.

The pottery in Japan had this kind of crackled glaze that was called crazing. It was very irregular patterns in the glazing and that’s how crazy quilting got its name. It was that these crazed glazes, people loved the aesthetic and so they wanted to start incorporating that in their quilting.

Ms. Aller kindly walked us through one of her quilts on display, highlighting some elements characteristic of crazy quilting.

If you notice, the value goes from light to dark, and it goes from light to dark out here, and that’s help to give the illusion of the perspective and landscape.

In the old days, all crazy quilts had spider webs on them. They were a symbol of good luck, so I put one on mine and I put letters in it, and it says: “Take root in my heart and bloom.” And that’s how I feel about flowers. I think one of my favorite aspects of this quilt is, I started making my own fabrics by making collages of fresh flowers and photographing them and then printing my digital photograph onto fabric, and then piecing my printed fabric into my crazy quilts. Every block has printed flowers.

This here, I call this my Chanel Camellia. A friend of mine had a blouse by Chanel and she didn’t like the camellia, so she gave it to me. And so I always think of my friend and her fancy Chanel blouse when I have that. I mean, I can look at any fabric and tell you where it came from, who gave it me, because a lot of crazy quilters trade fabrics. And I can tell where every single things came from. So in a way it’s a very wonderful repository of the friendships in my life as well.

Beading is another element incorporated into many quilts.

It gives you a whole new set of textures and dimension to work with. And a quilt like this you have to stop caring about how long it takes, and you have to fulfill your commitment to the quilt. So like this area up here, I think that was five hours at least to do that little motif of those gold beads. But you get such a rich surface. And again it’s so soothing to do. You can really calm your mind doing this kind of work. And my family thinks that’s a good thing!

Our program on American quilting tradition will continue. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to A Journey through Aesthetic Realms on Supreme Master Television as we continue our program about the Pajaro Valley Quilt Association’s annual show. The theme of this year’s quilt show was “It's Easy Being Green. Recycle, Reuse, Renew.”

We were trying to think of a really unique theme this year, and there’s such a green movement going on worldwide that we really thought that would be a good thing to use.

And part of it was, the quilt had to be made with at least 75% of recycled material. It could be old shirts, it could be scraps in your scrap basket, but you couldn’t go out and buy anything to make these quilts.

Quilting is a green activity.

My grandmother made lots and lots of quilts. And she did a lot of recycled stuff. She did recycle before recycle was recycle This is my quilt that I entered into the "Go Green Challenge."

This quilt is made of hemp and the batting is made from recycled water bottles. So this quilt just to me symbolizes the need to return to a more sustainable fabric choice.

For quilters, life is an endless source of inspiration.

Hi, I am Anna Branquits and I made this quilt for my son because he loves to play baseball and he has baseball pins that he collects, from all over the country and so he got a quilt to put them in.

But while some quilts relate to memories and anecdotes, others are created for sheer fun and imagination.

Sometimes we have different challenge things. And this year’s challenge is “Plants Incognito,” and we drew a name of a plant that we were supposed to illustrate without printing words on our quilt. And so we all had this title to do and worked on our own quilts separately and we’ve got them all displayed here. And they illustrate different plants and then people are supposed to guess which one.

The name that I picked out of the hat was “Old Man’s Woodworm,”

which is a common name for a California plant.

In the drawing, I got the name “Maidenhair Fern” and I didn’t know what in the world to do, so I emphasized her hair. And this type of coiled technique, I used for her bouffant hairdo.

When they all get together and you see what people have done with things that you don’t have any idea they’re going to use, it’s just really, really fun. It’s so important to me to be in this group, and I don’t like meetings at all, but I won’t miss the quilt group if I can possibly get there.

The dedication of the quilters to their pieces and to one another is heartwarming. So what is it that motivates these quilters?

In our small quilt group, we inspire each other’s creativity, we encourage our creative efforts, and we are able to get some feedback about different ideas that we have and how they will work, and we laugh a lot. We have a lot of fun doing this.

Tell us about the spiritual aspects of quilting.

Well for me, I think of God as the ultimate designer and creator, and as God made us in his image, we’re all creators. And so when I’m involved in the creative process, that’s my way being devotional, so it’s integral to my spiritual life.

Besides seeing it as a creative outlet and an emotional and spiritual support, the quilters at the Pajaro Valley Quilt Association also regard quilting as a way to help those in need. Over the past few years, they have donated hundreds of their handmade quilts to dozens of charities serving children, veterans, and disadvantaged people. Pele Fleming works in a program that teaches teenage mothers to quilt.

When the girls start, I have them do a quilt first, it’s a really good thing to start, and it also connects them with their baby too. I’m saying, “This is something special you’re making for your baby.”

It just really gives them a sense of accomplishment when they make something. It’s something that they made, even if it’s not perfect.

This blanket, I made for my son. He likes the strong colors a lot and because he is now three years old, and he doesn’t speak much, I thought that the blanket will help him in learning to talk a little more, with the colors and letters. So, here I put Bryan’s name, and he knows that his name is written here.

In quilting, new techniques and uses constantly evolve, as a quilter’s creativity can only expand through practice and the exchanges within this tight-knit community. Thus, quilting will always remain a cherished American tradition.

My cousin Carol who inherited the grandparents’ cottage, her best friend is a quilter. And this quilt was in American Quilter’s Society (AQS) Magazine the year that it won. And her friend is leafing through a quilt magazine with her, and she goes, “This quilt looks just like Michillinda!”

And my cousin said, “My cousin Ally made that quilt!” I hadn’t seen Carol in 40 years. But she called me. Long story short, we reconnected, and she has me back to the old family cottage for a week every summer.

After I started going back to visit my dear cousin Carol for a couple years, she would tell me about our grandmother who I did not know, and what a wonderful person she was and how much she enjoyed needlework, and that her grandmother had finished a crazy quilt that her mother had made in the 1890s. And our mutual grandmother had handed this quilt down to Carol, and she brought it up one year to show me.

And then she gave it to me… which you can imagine was quite meaningful. We didn’t know her name, the lady who made this. So we went to the family grave site together, and her name was Margaret. And with that, I would like to close and thank you for your attention, and encourage you please, thread those needles and get stitching.

We thank the Pajaro Valley Quilt Association and all participants at the quilt show for brightening our world with your charming craft so full of love and joy. May such endeavors of creating, giving and sharing help make our world a nicer and gentler place for all generations.

For more information about the Pajaro Valley Quilt Association, please visit

Artistic viewers, thank you for being with us today on A Journey through Aesthetic Realms on Supreme Master Television. Coming next is Vegetarianism: The Noble Way of Living, after Noteworthy News. Wishing you a happy and harmonious week ahead.