8:45 am to 10:28 am, September 11, 2001 (above New York City looking toward Boston). Anna Von Mertens used software to visualize what the stars would have looked like (even though they were obscured by daylight) throughout the duration of the September 11 attacks.

Gray Area/Ocean Currents. All of Von Mertens quilts are hand-stitched and hand-dyed. The pattern on this piece depicts the corkscrew feature of oceanic currents called the Ekman Spiral.

Von Mertens develops her patterns using computer software, traces them onto the fabric using chalk, then spends weeks to months hand-stitching them. Here is the computer detail for the Ekman Spiral stitch.

Aurora. Von Merten's most recent work is all-dyed fabric representing the Aurora borealis. "I am interested in the structure of this phenomenon, how different colors manifest at different altitudes and with different elements," she said.

Black and White. The stitching on these quilts show different views of a nuclear bomb blast. The black is a side view, while the white is from the top.

Black and White (Black). A detail of the energy pattern from a nuclear explosion.

Von Mertens sometimes uses scientific phenomena to explore her own relationships to places or events. In West, she stitched the Big Bang over sunset colors to represent California's vivid energy. The pattern on East, the quilt at the top, uses a black hole to represent introversion.

Palette (Arkanoid). Von Mertens translated the color palette and pixellation from the 80s video game Arkanoid into a traditional patchwork pattern. Look closely, and the needlework shows circuitry.

Anasazi 12th century migration. After reading a study describing how drought cycles—recorded in tree rings—correlate to human historic events, Von Mertens embarked on a series exploring how the lives of various human empires correlated with the lives of trees that lived in the same places and times.

Anasazi 12th century migration, detail. Von Mertens' stitching perfectly matches the trees ring pattern, while the thread color—from white to gray to black—signifies the health of the human civilization. "The Anasazi had a rolling cycle of droughts, and it was years before their settlements were truly abandoned," she said.