These portraits of American quilt makers provide insights into the inspirations for their work, family, tradition, the joy of the creative process, and the challenge of design, and how it has become a part of their daily lives. Seven women, including a California Mennonite, a Bulgarian immigrant and an African American from Mississippi are portrayed. The 15 minute excerpt on Folkstreams.net includes the sections on artist/teacher Grace Earl, the artist and Bulgarian immigrant Radka Donnell, and the African American quilter Nora Lee Condra.

"Of the seven women seen during the course of Quilts in Women's Lives, some are indeed painters using scraps of material for their medium, and they take traditional painterly attitudes toward their work. But over and above painting, quiltmaking develops into a metaphor of life itself. Quilts in Women's Lives is visual anthropology. It examines by implication quiltmaking as a system of communication, record-keeping and structuring principle. The film, like the quilts, embodies the reassuring care, the forgiving attention to detail and the fascination of detail and emerging pattern that animates the best of life itself."
--- Charles Shere for the Oakland Tribune.