It turns out making a quilt can be a lot like making a documentary.

There are so many pieces to stitch together it can seem a little overwhelming at first, but when it all comes together, a beautiful array of images form a moving portrait that is timeless.

Such was the case when Asheville’s Paul Bonesteel teamed up with his mother, the legendary Hendersonville quilter Georgia Bonesteel, to produce a documentary called “The Great American Quilting Revival.”

The film, produced by Bonesteel Films of Asheville, was one of the highlights at this year’s Highlands International Film Festival in August, and based on its initial interest, it will surely draw an enthusiastic following when it begins airing this fall on PBS-TV stations nationwide.

While Paul Bonesteel acknowledges that the film is not intended to be the definitive work on the art of quilting, it is a fascinating collection of interviews, historical accounts and even controversial issues that draw closer attention to the popular resurgence of quilting over the past century.

It all started when Georgia Bonesteel, known for her long-running North Carolina Public Television show on quilting, went to be inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame in Marion, Indiana, and promised an audience there that her son Paul would come up and interview some of the big names in quilting. Paul, who acknowledges that he didn’t know much about the quilting scene and didn’t really understand the need for a Quilters Hall of Fame, quickly became engrossed with the idea of interviewing famous quilters and quilting experts.

“This one was really a struggle because I didn’t know what the story was,” Bonesteel said.

Bonesteel is steadily earning a reputation as a talented documentary producer with credits like “Folkmoot USA,” an Emmy-nominated film about the annual international dance festival based in Waynesville, and “The Mystery of George Masa,” which earned praise for its portrait of the Japanese-American photographer and hiker who helped promote and trailblaze the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and North Carolina’s section of the Appalachian Trail. With “The Great American Quilting Revival,” Bonesteel reaches beyond Western North Carolina and tackles a subject with rich American roots.

“I approach each documentary with a different way that it should be told,” Bonesteel said.

Unlike feature films that need shots to set the scene or build plot or develop character, documentaries jump right into the subject at hand, he explained.

“I enjoyed making documentaries more than anything because you can get there quicker.”

However, with this latest film, what began with a series of interviews in Indiana grew into a huge project. New questions arose. How could the interviews be condensed into an hour-long documentary that would appeal to quilters and non-quilters alike? How could a film encompass so many quilting patterns and the quilting histories of each region? Who else would need to be interviewed to make sure the documentary was covering its bases? What about the controversial issues such as the idea that quilts were used as symbols to help slaves get through the Underground Railroad or the modern-day stitching machines that produce quilts in a fraction of the time traditional hand-stitching takes? How could the film treat its subject with dignity while preventing itself from being blatantly inaccurate and unfairly biased?

“It’s crazy how complicated it is,” Paul said. “These are the things that had me frozen in fear.” After about six months of editing and having to transcribe every single interview into print, the pieces started to fit. Georgia Bonesteel became the narrator.

“I knew Paul was a perfectionist,” she said. “It taxes

his creative mind.”

In the process, both Paul and his mother gained a new

appreciation for the other’s art form.

“I’m very proud of what Paul has done,” Georgia

Bonesteel said.

And just as quilting pushes the artist to try new forms, new patterns, new fabrics and styles, film-making has that sense of daring, visual experimentation and creativity at work.

“It pushes you in so many ways,” she said.

In addition to dozens of interviews with quilting experts, quilt collectors, and Hall of Fame quilters, the film documents the life of Marie Webster, who popularized floral quilting patterns and turned her Marion, Ind., home into a successful business in the first half of the century. While Webster didn’t start quilting until she was 50 years old, she found a huge response when she began selling quilting squares. The floral patterns came from flowers she picked from her garden and then pressed onto fabric. Her home is now the site of the Quilters Hall of Fame.

Later on, as women’s rights and civil rights became major issues in the 1960s and 1970s, quilting became a source of women’s pride. When a 1971 art exhibit of nothing but quilts opened at the Whitney Gallery in New York City, the critics vaulted quilting from craft to fine art, and the show went on to tour America for two years.

The film also reflects on how quilts have been used, from the massive AIDS quilt to the controversy behind exporting mass-marketed quilts abroad to quilts that were displayed as a reaction to the tragedy of 9/11.

Over the years, quilting has become a creative outlet for millions; an art form for expressing social and political ideas; and a way to bring together generations of women (and some men) as they pass on traditions, cherish family history, trade stories about day-to-day life and leave a legacy for their families.

“The Great American Quilt Revival” celebrates quilters as entrepreneurs, artists, historians and inventors, and takes the quilt from its functional origins on beds to becoming intricate, fabric canvases on the wall.

As a tangible link to the past, to a person’s story and place in time, quilts seem to say, “Don’t forget me,” as one person interviewed in the film says.

“The Great American Quilt Revival” will be shown at the upcoming International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, and will have additional screenings in Oxford, Miss., and Lexington, Ky. About 70 percent of the American Public Television markets have accepted it for broadcasting starting this fall.

(Michael Beadle is a poet and free-lance writer living in Canton. He can be reached at beadlepoet@yahoo.com.)