♪ ♪ (wind blowing) (birds chirping) (rooster crows in distance) (sprinklers spraying) (wildlife chittering) (dogs barking in distance) (birds twittering, barking continues) BRENDA BAILEY: If you had a day all to yourself, what would you do?

I would sew.

(chuckles) I wouldn't do the dishes, I wouldn't cook.

I would just sew all day.

Play with fabric.

When I was in high school, my favorite class was math.

I took college algebra and trigonometry my senior year and was one of the top students.

Just before I got ready to graduate, I went to visit with my counselor, and she asked me what I wanted to major in, and, and I told her, "Math."

And she said, "Girls don't do that.

Change your mind."

Ended up majoring in home economics in college.

But I use math every day with my quilting.

(rain falling) I started quilting for my family.

When I had children, I made quilts for them, and they weren't pretty, but they were, you, you know, useful.

I volunteered to teach quilting, and so I took what I'd learned and made it into a six-week class.

When they were done, the ladies wanted more, so I started publishing.

We didn't set out to have a business.

It was just kind of an accident.

(chuckles) We were doing really well.

♪ ♪ That's all water under the bridge for us now.

♪ ♪ A little over nine years ago, my husband was in a severe accident and broke his neck, and was completely paralyzed.

It has completely changed his life, of course, and it's completely changed mine and our family's, as well.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ As he's getting less and less able to take care of himself, I, I just am here, and take care of him every day.

(wind chimes tinkling) (clock pendulum swinging) Quilting, now it, it's not for others, it's for me.

It is a way for me to escape from the reality of my life.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (birds chirping) ♪ ♪ It's very refreshing, almost, to have something like that that I can do, rather than just sit around and feel sorry for myself, 'cause I don't, I don't feel sorry for myself at all.

'Cause I'm able to create, and it, it's a good feeling to do that.

(sprinklers spraying) (birds chirping, insects chittering) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (dog barks) ♪ ♪ SARA BUSCAGLIA: When I quit college, I didn't know what I was going to do, and that was a, kind of a scary time.

We started a garden, and we were planting seeds, and all of a sudden, these seeds are sprouting up out of soil, and I thought it was the most magical thing I had ever seen.

And I fell in love with it and knew right then that was the kind of magic that I just always wanted to partake in.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (blows softly) When I had my first son-- he was born in the early fall-- in my head, I was gonna just bring him with me and keep on working, but the elements were too strong for him.

We couldn't be out there.

I found myself at home, alone with him often, and I had to fill that, that gap with something else.

(playing song) It was just a lonely time.

(birds chirping) I got a sewing machine, and something just woke up in me.

That led to quilting and fiber arts.

(wind chimes tinkling) (snaps) Alchemy is another word for transformation.

(snapping) The whole act of quilting is transformative.

It begins with small pieces, and ends with that final stitch that holds it all together.

(birds chirping) (rooster crows in distance) The first time I experienced naturally dyed fibers, I was transfixed by the idea that color could be extracted from nature and then transferred to fiber.

♪ ♪ That whole concept of plants for color was something I had never even thought about before, and so it was revolutionary.

It was one of those pivotal moments in my life.

(opening and closing jar) (replaces jar on shelf) ♪ ♪ (dye sloshing) ♪ ♪ (dog barks) Natural dyes are imperfect, just like nature itself.

The colors sort of awaken a cellular memory, nourishing us.

♪ ♪ (birds chirping) (footsteps approaching) (Hudson introducing herself in Navajo) (speaking Navajo) I'm from Sheep Springs, New Mexico, on the great Navajo Nation.

(rooster crowing in distance) When I was little, my mom sat me down and she started showing me how to sew by hand.

My original sewing machines are my hands, and, you know, 64 years later, I'm still using them.

What I'm showing right here is usually when, um, they're looking for the missing and murdered, they're searching, and, um, usually, they'll find them off the cliffs.

They're dumped.

And so, this is-- I know it's not a good one, but this is-- and I don't have the face showing this way, 'cause I always have that head and their arm hanging off.

And then she's searching, and she's at this side.

And then you can see, on this side of the canyon, that she saw... She's looking for the body, she sees it.

I know it's not real good, but that's what that is.

That's how I sketch.

These quilts, they take me 18 months.

You know, I start the prayers...

I know what I'm gonna make next year.

It's, it's really vague.

I can see it, it's right there.

But I just can't grasp it.

And then I'll start, like, um... You know, the skirts go like this.

I, I say my prayers, you know, I bless off my sewing machines, I bless off my hands, I bless off my material.

You know, my conversation with my, the Holy People or the spirit helpers, and, you know, of my ancestors.

I ask them for guidance.

When I was little, you know, my hands would get hit if I didn't sew correctly.

I hated sewing after that.

♪ ♪ As I got older, I finally asked my mom, you know, "Why did you, you know, hit me when you were teaching me how to sew?"

And so then she started telling me the story of when she was in the boarding school.

They taught her to be a servant.

They didn't teach her math and English and all of that.

You know, how to write letters.

They forced them to sew clothes, to sew quilts.

That's what quilting means to me, is the honoring of my, the suffering that my aunts, my grandma, my, especially my mother went through.

(steam hissing) ♪ ♪ (whirring) (machine beeps) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I never taught my kids how to sew.

I did not want to teach them like the way I was taught.

But we were so poor, I had to figure out what I can do to survive, and what I was good at to be able to sell.

'Cause I knew that if I can make a lot of quilts, you know, with a cheap material, I can sell them and, you know, be able to put, you know, buy them shoes.

And I used to tell my kid, man, you know, if they didn't eat so much, we'd be okay.

(laughs) (hinges creaking) I have quilts basically all over the world-- Switzerland, Hong Kong, couple of them in Germany.

I have them in the National Museum of American Indians, the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, the Heard Museum in, uh, Phoenix, Arizona, and the Autry Museum in L.A.

I always knew that I was going to be chosen for something, just didn't know what it was.

It's to tell the, the stories of my grandma, tell the stories that they couldn't tell, that they couldn't speak about.

My ancestors were on the Long Walk.

They said them prayers in the morning.

They said their prayers in the evening.

They said their prayers for me, for her.

They didn't know who we were.

They didn't know our names.

I'm that link to the past, I'm the link to the future, I'm the link to the present.

♪ ♪ In the morning, when I say my prayers for my ancestors to thank them, those strong women, if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be here.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪