This quilt is one of a series of quilts I generated following Election Day 2024. There were so many changes to laws, funding, access – especially related to my discipline and my research – that I used my sewing machine for Processing the Policies. Explore the collection.

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Back in 2020, Studio E Fabrics released a fabric collection titled The Joy of Painting. The nine fabrics were patterned in honor of the television series of the same name, featuring artist Bob Ross who instructed viewers on how to paint nature scenes. Airing on public television from 1983-1994, Bob Ross was known for his calm, even voice, guiding everyone from a blank canvas at the start to finishing a half-hour later with a painting containing natural objects such as “happy little trees”. You can catch these episodes on YouTube.

I knew about Bob Ross, but I never watched his show beyond a few moments of curiosity. Yet for some reason, when The Joy of Painting fabric became available, I put in an online order for some of the prints. Then those fabrics ended up in a pile among my piles of fabrics in my house. And that is where they remained until a quick series of events in late 2025 led me to uncover the fabrics – which served as more of an inspiration instead of the foundation for a quilt.

In July 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to cut $1.1 billion meant to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in 2026 and 2027. The CPB distributes the federal dollars to NPR, PBS and more than 1,500 of their member stations for programming (see NPR article Congress rolls back $9 billion in public media funding and foreign aid). By January 2026, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting votes to end operations. All of these updates just broke my heart. As someone that was raised as a kid watching Sesame Street, Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood, and the The Electric Company, I also watched the Boston Pops and other programming with my family. And anyone from the state of Connecticut knows how important public television was in the 1990’s in bringing UConn Women’s Basketball to households before their games were picked up and aired by major networks.

Many like myself are hoping there can be a way to ensure the continuation of public television and radio. One such effort took place starting November 2025 – the auctioning off of Bob Ross paintings, to “enable stations to maintain their educational programming while redirecting funds toward other critical operations and local content production threatened by federal funding cuts” (NPR article). It turns out, The first of 30 Bob Ross works were auctioned to help public TV. They broke records. So far, the first three paintings have yielded $662,000 at auction. The remaining will be sold throughout 2026.

Although the NPR article in the previous paragraph states that, “”I think he [Bob Ross] would be very disappointed” about the CPB cuts… “I think he would have decided to do exactly what we’re doing right now … I think this would have probably been his idea.”” This still saddens me that we have to sell Bob Ross painting to support public programming. So for me, Bob Ross’ happy little trees have been featured in this quilt that I’m calling Unhappy Little Trees for the status of funds for public broadcasting.

Because the idea of canceling funding for public radio and television is just “crazy” to me, I made a crazy quilt with all the fabrics featuring tree patterns in chaos. I put the crazy quilt in a picture frame of fabric, with an auction sign in the lower-right corner to represent the auctioning of the Bob Ross paintings. Ironically, the only place I used my Joy of Painting fabric was on the back – a print of paint tubes with Bob Ross’s face on each one. (*now to figure out what to do with the remaining fabrics from the collection…)

The quilt was completed January 17, 2026, and measures 30 inches by 30 inches. All the tree fabrics were purchased through Peak to Peak Stitching in Estes Park, Colorado.

(*Note this quilt is not up for auction! I’m just representing a framed Bob Ross painting with trees that is on the auction block.)