is provided by Columbus Visitors Center, celebrating everywhere art and unexpected architecture in Columbus, Indiana.

Tickets for guided tours and trip planning information at Columbus.in.us.

And by WTIU members.

Thank you!

>> ASHLEY: Coming up, take a drive along Elkhart County's Heritage Trail for a look at their remarkable quilt gardens.

See a different side of Indy in our latest "From Above" segment.

Take to the skies with a Bloomington balloon pilot.

And travel to Brown County for a look at one Hoosier artist's unique paper quilts.

That's all on this episode of "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> ASHLEY: Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Ashley Chilla, and we're coming to you from the Quilters Hall of Fame in Grant County.

Located in the historic Marie Webster House, the Quilters Hall of Fame was founded in 1979 to celebrate the art of quilting and the people who have made major contributions to the quilting world.

And we'll learn all about the Hall of Fame, their current exhibit and much more in just a bit.

But first, we're headed north to experience the quilt gardens along Elkhart County's Heritage Trail.

♪ >> So we have some very creative people in Elkhart County, and we sat around a table just brainstorming way back in 2006.

And they said, how could we bring something to life that not only our residents would enjoy, but would connect with our stories, who our people, and who our places are, that would communicate and welcome visitors as well?

And so the idea was, like, hey, we have a lot of gardening here.

We're an agricultural-based community.

We also have a lot of quilters.

Quilting heritage among our communities and cities and towns is deep here.

So we said, could we combine them together?

We didn't know if we could.

So we tested.

We gave plants to two different sites and said, go play.

Within a month, they called, not only do people like this.

We love it!

You need to do more of this, and that's how a quilt garden got started.

♪ Quilt gardens are giant gardens planted in the shape of quilt patterns.

They range in size from 800 square feet all the way up to 3500 square feet.

We have over 1 million blooms in six different cities and towns throughout this amazing area.

It's the only place in the nation they exist, right here in Elkhart County.

We have 16 different garden sites overall, plus 21 mural sites.

Each business and location can either be a nonprofit, a park, a business, a for-profit business, a large or small activity.

One garden is located at our courthouse.

So it's connected with our county government.

Each site manages it based upon either their own personal staff or volunteers.

So there's everything from the master gardeners involved.

One year we had Girl Scouts helping.

There are Friends of the Parks involved.

Variety of individuals who just love their community and love to quilt or garden.

They really do do a great job.

They monitor each other, and we set up this program and project where everybody had an equal playing field initially, but allowed each garden to express their creativity, and they do notice.

Everybody notices what everyone does, because the next year when they apply, then you will always see different things that they add to their application, taken from their friends.

>> We enjoy the town that we live in and that we work in.

And we enjoy having the visitors come in and it's -- >> It's really fun to meet people.

They come in to see it, and they are so appreciative of the work that we do and the beauty of the garden.

>> I think that is probably the biggest enjoyment, is to see people drive up, stop, take photographs, and give you comments about the area.

>> Basically, it's just really giving back to the community, and that's our way of giving it back a little bit to the community that we live and work in.

>> So the Heritage Trail, is a 90-mile scenic driving route.

It was designated by "Time Life Magazine" as one of the top 40 scenic drives in the nation.

You can have an audio tour.

It's like having your own personal tour guide, and as you travel along -- here at the historical museum, for example, up pops a beautiful quilt garden, and you have just heard all of the history of this great place before.

So it really enhances and entices you to come inside and explore.

So the quilt garden project would not happen without 200 plus volunteers, businesses, merchants, who are investing personally, professionally, out of their line items and out of their pockets, whether it be buying a can of Miracle-Gro or a sprinkler head or investing time of digging and weeding and planting.

They are hard-working people and embody what Elkhart County represents.

So I hope when people come and visit, they get a chance to meet our residents and learn all the stories and have a great time.

>> ASHLEY: Unfortunately, the quilt gardens are closed for the year, but there's still lots to see and do in Elkhart County.

Just head over to visitelkhartcounty.com for all the info.

Earlier, we caught up with Deb Geyer to learn all about the Quilters Hall of Fame.

♪ >> We are here at the Quilters Hall of Fame.

In 1991, this house in Marion, Indiana, was donated to the Quilters Hall of Fame.

Georgia Marie Webster moved into this house in 1902.

1911, Marie decided she wanted to make a new quilt for her new house.

Well, her family and friends loved the quilt so much, they convinced her to mail the quilt in to "Ladies' Home Journal."

Well, the editor loved it!

And he got back with her and he said, if you design three more patterns and quilt -- make the quilts, we will photograph them and feature them in one of our magazines.

And so she was an immediate star in the quilt world.

She figured out how to mass produce quilt patterns using a blueprint machine, actually.

The Quilters Hall of Fame was founded in 1979, in Vienna, Virginia, by Hazel Carter.

Hazel Carter thought it was important to honor those that had made outstanding contributions to the world of quilting.

Anybody can nominate anyone, and then the selection committee chooses one or two every year, and they look for, first off, contributions to the world of quilting, whether that be as a quilter, as a historian, as a curator.

We try to make sure every year we have a variety of styles that we display, but we also try to make sure that we are honoring our honorees also with displays about them and their work.

Quilting has a very varied audience, children, adults, seniors, grandmothers.

There are a lot of different reasons to appreciate quilts.

The reactions are varied -- as varied as the quilts that come in.

Some will say, wow, I could never do something like that!

Some of them will say, oh, I never thought to do that.

I would like to try that, and maybe I will try that in my own quilting.

We hope that quilters leave with inspiration for their own work, and then for non-quilters, we're hoping that they leave here with a higher appreciation of quilting, and quilts and that they will go up in the attic and pull that old quilt out of the attic and look at it through new eyes.

>> ASHLEY: You can learn more at quiltershalloffame.net.

I have always been really interested in quilting, and I'm terrible at sewing.

So it's never been my thing, but being here has really inspired me, and I hope maybe I can get into it soon.

Up next, we're headed to the Circle City, for the latest installment in our "From Above" series.

♪ >> Indianapolis, the Circle City.

Indy.

♪ A destination for many.

It's home to more than 850,000 Hoosiers.

It's also home to countless smaller destinations for visitors and locals alike.

On the south side, you will find Indy's oldest city park.

Established in the late 19th century, Garfield Park is home to a performing arts center, walking trails, a conservatory, and the beautiful sunken gardens designed by landscape architect George Edward Kessler.

Today, as in Kessler's time, this 3-acre site features European-style formal gardens, fountains, and paved brick walkways.

Just east of the sunken gardens, you will find the Garfield Park Conservatory, home to hundreds of different plants from the world's tropics.

Travel north, past the Indiana State House, and you will reach the canal walk, on most days filled with walkers, runners, bikers, and sightseers.

On the north end of the canal walk, sits the USS Indianapolis CA-35 Memorial, created in the shape of the cruiser itself, this gray and black granite memorial features the story of the ship's sinking on one side, and the names of those lost on the other.

To the east, stands the Indiana War Memorial formally dedicated on November 11th, 1933.

This 210-foot tall structure, clad in Indiana limestone, is the centerpiece of the World War Memorial Plaza.

A decade's long effort by the city of Indianapolis to lure the newly formed American Legion from its temporary home in New York City.

On the south side of the memorial, in the center of the grand stairs, stands Pro Patria, a bronze by American sculptor Henry Hering.

Standing 24 feet high and weighing 7 tons, it was, at the time of its casting, the largest bronze sculpture in the United States.

Near the top of the memorial, and repeated on all four sides, are six figures, again by Hering.

Courage, memory, peace, victory, liberty and patriotism.

The plaza is a sequel of sorts to Indy's best known memorial, the Soldiers and the Sailors Monument.

It was designed by German architect Bruno Schmitz, and it was the first monument in the United States to honor the common soldier.

At its peak, stands Lady Victory designed by Ohioan George Thomas Brewster, dedicated in 1902, and rising nearly 300 feet above Monument Circle, it has become a lasting and iconic symbol of Indianapolis.

>> ASHLEY: Up next, we're leaving the skies of Marion County, to meet some high-flying hot air balloon pilots in Monroe County.

Producer Reuben Browning has the story.

♪ >> In ballooning, most people are afraid of the unknown.

There's excitement.

There's a little bit of stress.

Being a pilot definitely makes me look at things in a different perspective, especially a balloon pilot, because we may see a landing spot out ahead of us and call that Plan A, but the winds may change, or something may come up, we may land on Plan P or Q down the road.

So you have to be really flexible.

You have to not be set totally in your ways, and you have to be able to kind of change with the wind.

♪ I'm Andy Richardson.

I'm a local hot air balloon pilot here in Bloomington, Indiana, and I also own Adams Balloons, which is a type certificated hot air balloon manufacturer.

So I grew up a mile south of the Oliver Winery, and Bill Oliver, the owner of the winery, has flown hot air balloons since 1976.

♪ >> We make the whole broad range of wines, we make, you know, classic vinifera wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc.

I think actually the question is how did a hot air balloonist get into wine making?

I was very interested in ballooning as a kid, because I read books about balloons, and I just kind of considered it to be the ultimate sort of escapist adventure, just to float away.

After my first flight, I was obsessed.

I mean, really!

This is just, like, this is what I want to do.

You know, I was 14 at the time.

The winery was growing.

It needed some promotion, and I made the right sales pitch to my dad, and so we got a balloon.

The connection between making wine and consuming wine and flying hot air balloons is they are both just really joyful experiences.

>> We would see the Oliver Winery balloon fly over almost every weekend.

So I got intrigued with it at a really, really young age, and I would go down to the winery on the weekends and ask if they needed help on their chase crews or help flying the balloon, and Bill was always super gracious and always welcomed people being there to help.

And I vividly remember my mom saying, this is a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

Enjoy it.

And as soon as I took off, I thought, I don't want this to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

I want to do this forever.

I ended up not wanting to buy a car when I was young.

I wanted to buy a balloon.

So I sold pop cans and mowed lawns, and did anything I could to save a dime, and I bought a balloon when I was 14.

It was hard to explain to my parents that I didn't want to go work a regular 9-to-5 job, that I wanted to work for myself, and build and manufacture hot air balloons.

Through just a weird stroke of luck, I had the opportunity to buy Adams Balloons, and since 2015, we have grown into one of the largest balloon manufacturers in the U.S. >> About three years ago, I met some pilots and went out to crew for them one day, and absolutely was hooked.

I loved every minute of it, and I haven't really missed a flight since.

It's just in my blood.

It's my passion now.

>> We do a lot of the corporate logoed balloons and a lot of the artwork balloons in our shop.

We do offer special shapes.

We are gearing up to build a special shaped gorilla that is going to head overseas after it's built.

We take the raw goods and turn them into aircraft.

So we get bolts of fabric.

We pull it out on to our cutting panel and cut the panels of the hot air balloon.

>> Glue the appliques down and single-needle stitch all the appliques on the panels.

>> And then from there, it comes over to my department where I sit at the sewing machine and sew it together.

And then I actually assemble all of the pieces of the aircraft to turn it into the hot air balloon.

>> So right now, I'm working on panel four.

These are the flames for the little devil artwork.

This is nylon, ripstop nylon.

Very lightweight, but durable.

I cut the yellow panel first, then I cut the red panel, and I cut all the flames out with a razor knife by hand.

We lay everything over and then glue down the edges, and then I'm going to take it over to my machine, and I will single stitch all the edges to hold it all together.

It's not unlike a quilt.

I mean, just bigger pieces.

>> And then after we get done sewing it, we take it outside and test inflate it.

♪ So your average sized hot air balloon will carry a pilot and two passengers.

We have balloons that carry 12 to 14, 16 passengers for the ride company, and we take birthdays, anniversaries, wedding proposals, dates.

We fly locally here over Monroe County, and the scenery here is just fantastic because we're right next to the Hoosier National Forest and Brown County State Park.

This is just extremely scenic.

So it makes for fantastic views while we're flying.

>> I have flown all over the country.

This is best place I have ever flown in.

It's got the right combination of interesting terrain, and also kind of being, we are mid-continental in terms of our weather patterns.

We go on longer flights at times.

>> And in ballooning, you are completely at the mercy of the wind.

It's a fun challenge every time you fly.

People have been flying hot air balloons since 1783.

So it's an old technology.

There's no way to steer a balloon once you take off, other than hoping that when you change the altitude you can find a different wind direction.

We spend a lot of time before every flight looking at maps and looking at wind directions to decide the proper spot to take off from.

Ballooning is a fair weather sport for sure.

So we have to be really cautious about wind speeds and thunderstorms or rain.

While we're floating through the sky, it's almost totally silent.

Everything about it just seems so peaceful.

You are away from the hustle and the bustle on the ground and nobody can bug you while you're up there.

It's just you get to relax and enjoy it.

So as long as there's no obstacles, you can fly a foot off the ground or you can fly 10,000 feet off the ground.

You can actually dip down into the trees.

You can pick leaves out of the tops of the trees.

You can see wildlife.

You see deer.

You see foxes.

You see rabbits.

There's nothing like being in a balloon and flying over people.

>> The pool looks nice.

[ Cheer ] >> Wanna beer?

>> Yeah!

>> People come out of their house and they get their camera.

They will get their kids, and everybody stands there and waves, and it's just so cool to see so many smiles on people's faces.

♪ Most people don't realize it, but we can hear every single thing they say on the ground.

So they'll be having conversations saying, oh, I'm sure they can't hear us.

And we'll yell down, yes, we can!

>> We're flying over houses, and you'll oftentimes get a kid, they jump on their bicycle -- I'm only going 5 to 8 miles an hour, so it's fairly easy to keep up with us.

You have this small pack of children on their bike chasing you down as you fly over.

>> Hot air balloons never land where we took off from.

One of my favorite things to do in ballooning is to land in and around housing additions.

>> Because I get a bunch of kids out.

You know, oftentimes, they will stand at a distance, 100 feet away.

I'm like, hey, guys, come on over here.

Yeah, you can touch the balloon.

Do you want to get in the basket, and really engage them that way.

I love it.

>> Mike, I'm probably going to go just on the other side of the apartment buildings.

>> And I think it's just that kind of connection with people has been so rewarding and really has taught me a lot about just, you know, humanity.

Because we end up connecting with people that in most circumstances we never would because we landed in their backyard, right?

We have these great conversations, and oftentimes, they tell me way more about themselves than I expect, and I just become a friend of sorts.

>> It's a really, really unique job, and it's really rewarding in a lot of ways.

It's what I was meant to do.

>> ASHLEY: You know, being here around all of these quilts, it really struck me that hot air balloons are much like quilts.

They are pieced together in patterns and sewn together, and one keeps you warm, and one takes you up in the air.

You can learn more at Bloomingtonballoonrides.com.

>>> And finally, we are headed to Brown County to meet a quilter cut from a different sort of cloth.

Producer Jason Pear has the story behind Lost Lake Studio.

♪ >> Michele Pollock's journey to Lost Lake Studio, located in eastern Brown County was not a direct one.

>> When I was young and deciding what to do, going to college, it was either going to be the engineering degree at Purdue, or I was going to get an English degree.

>> She went the engineering route, and following graduation, found herself in Minnesota, working for 3M.

>> Decided pretty quickly that wasn't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

>> So during her ten years in the corporate world, Michele pursued other interests.

She went back to school and got a master's degree in poetry.

She also rediscovered her love of visual arts.

>> So then at that time, I was doing collages and stitching, and I was hand-binding a book, and I had one of those actual like, eureka, a-ha moments.

I was sewing the book together.

You sew them together by hand, and I realized that I was in sewing in paper, and I started hand sewing in some of my collages.

And one day I stuck one through the sewing machine and one thing led to another, and now that's mostly what I do, is sew with the sewing machine and paper.

The main medium I work in, I sort of made up.

♪ I like to consider it drawing with the sewing machine.

I outline the pieces.

I add texture.

I add lines.

So it's like applique quilting, but in paper, or it's like collage with sewing.

A lot of it is based on photographs.

I walk every day in the woods.

I photograph what I see.

I use those to make patterns for my work and then I write based on what I see.

I don't really fit in one medium.

And I think those places where two things come together, I think, there's just interesting things to explore.

>> And that willingness to explore didn't stop with paper quilting.

>> I started making the paper sculptures after I took a pop-up book class.

So I enjoyed a lot the pop-up books, and I enjoyed the idea of making the three-dimensional images, but it was pretty restrictive.

You can't put extra things in it.

They have to fold flat when you are done.

And I had the idea, well, if I stick these into a shadow box frame, then I can put anything I want in them.

So they're inspired by pop-up books, but now, of course, I have gone beyond what you could put into a pop-up book.

I sew the pieces together to get the dimensionality and the texture.

I layer up the pieces, and I can make them as three-dimensional as I like.

>> Michele also makes functional art.

>> So I like to think of my journals and my bookmarks and my note cards as, like, artwork that people get to touch and use every day.

When people are reading or when people are journaling, they get to touch and use the things I make over and over again.

>> At the end of the day, they're all opportunities for Michele to further explore a medium she's grown to love.

>> I love the variety of paper.

I love that it's easy to work with.

I mean, it's one of the first art supplies you give a kid.

I mean, it's pretty easy to work with.

I collect paper the way quilters collect fabric.

So I have a stash of paper, probably multiple lifetimes worth of paper.

It's like a treasure hunt every time I'm making something to find the right piece and the right texture and color to fit the spot I'm working on.

♪ >> And along with the medium and a career, Michele has found a community to love as well.

>> I'm a pretty social person, a pretty extroverted person that likes to be around other people, especially other people who are doing these kinds of creative works.

So Brown County is a wonderful place to live for that.

There's a fantastic community of artists that I tapped into almost immediately when I moved here.

So for me, that's probably my biggest source of inspiration.

>> ASHLEY: You can get all the info and see more of Michele's work at lostlakestudio.com.

And as always, we encourage you to stay connected with us.

Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we have been, and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

But before we say good-bye, let's enjoy the sights and sounds of Indiana's remarkable Cataract Falls.

♪ >> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by Columbus Visitors Center, celebrating everywhere art and unexpected architecture in Columbus, Indiana.

Tickets for guided tours and trip planning information at Columbus.in.us.

And by WTIU members.

Thank you!