Four panels of the vibrant art measure some 14-feet wide and 14-feet tall. They include quilt squares made by members and staff of the senior center.

The quilt is part of the city's plan for three works of public art at the senior center, which opened in 2003. The city's budget for all three works of public art was $100,000.

What the city got for a fraction of that total--$10,000 for the quilt project and the $2,000 for long-term maintenance--is a professionally designed work of art. But what makes the piece distinctive is the way it was created.

The 2002 Sunnyvale Arts Commission approved a collaborative wall hanging concept and commissioned San Jose artist Therese May to create the design. Volunteers constructed it.

May is an internationally distinguished textile artist.

She began making quilts in 1965, and her 1969 Andy Warhol-inspired quilt "Therese" was selected by The Alliance for American Quilts, the American Quilt Study Group, the International Quilt Association and the National Quilting Association as one of the 100 best American quilts of the 20th century.

Her work has earned such awards as the Quilts Japan Prize in Quilt National 1995 and the Most Innovative Use of Medium award in Quilt National in 1985.

Her signature whimsical style shows up in the Sunnyvale Community Quilt she produced after gathering ideas, images and themes from public workshops. Members of the center wanted the quilt to tell the story of the city's agricultural past and of its technological present and include pieces of what make a city a community--the people who run it, occupy it, keep it safe, those who built it and those who make it fun.

May took all those elements, drew out the overall design and created templates for individual squares. She purchased the many fabrics for the quilt and left the cutting to the members of the senior center--the sewing came later.

Marty Rawson, a volunteer at the center; Jane Okashima, a staff member; and more than 40 seniors constructed each of the 192 squares.

That was when the fun began.

People working on the quilt added their own touches to each square.

"On this car, someone added a cutout of a woman," May says, pointing to a square located toward the bottom of the quilt.

Riding in a convertible in the "transportation" row is a cutout of a woman in the flapper style of the 1920s. The flapper wasn't part of May's original design. Instead of enforcing her design on the final piece, May welcomed the flapper and all the other personal enhancements volunteer quilt-makers added.

"You can see Therese May's style, but it truly is a collaborative effort," says Kristen Dance, arts coordinator of the senior center. "People wanted to add their own special artistic touches, and she was gracious enough to allow them to do their own thing."

Dance was the beneficiary of such graciousness when she chose to make the dog square on the quilt's animal row. Her own dog, a 15-year-old boxer named Madchen, had died recently and Dance decided to redraw May's dog image to look more like her own dog.

"Therese let me redraw it. I put a chain and a heart on it. I said to [Therese] later, 'This is a signature piece. You should never have let me do it,' " Dance says. "But [Therese] said, 'You needed to do it.' "

Each square tells its own story, not only about the development of Sunnyvale, but also of the people who constructed the quilt.

"All the seniors have a sense of pride and ownership," says Kay Whitney, the city's cultural arts education coordinator.

The bottom row of the quilt is mainly photographs, some old, some new. Rawson, who is also a member of the Sunnyvale Historical Society, was able to provide historical photographs such as one of the Murphy family, for whom Murphy Street is named; Hendy Ironworks, a five-and-ten-cent store and an apricot orchard. Other photographs are current and include images of the people who worked on the quilt and their signatures.

Each of the quilting workshops included up to 12 people; fabric and templates were provided along with a guide for which fabric was the background for each row. But the volunteers decided which fabric to use for the actual cutout.

Dance points out one square that ended up in reverse--the sewer mistakenly used the background fabric for the cutout piece. Not to worry, May says, it fits right in. And the diversity of the quilt with all its shapes, images and colors reflects the diversity of Sunnyvale.

Sometimes the creative touches by those who made the squares went beyond artistic flair and came from the heart--such as one calla lily in the "flower" row. Senior center staff member Okashima's mother--a 50-year Sunnyvale resident--had died shortly before the quilt project started. In her mother's honor, Okashima decided to build a quilt square with a flower on it because her mother's Japanese name meant "flower." Okashima added a personal memento to the square, a heart-shaped locket and a flower-shaped pin that had belonged to her mother.

"When the quilt was installed, family members and friends came to see the square," Okashima says.

Along with heartfelt remembrances, bits of humor made their way onto the quilt, too. For instance, a square that includes firefighters' helmet includes a ring of hot chili pepper fabric cutouts around the top of the helmet.

Rawson says he and other contributors brought bits and pieces from home--such as a zipper pull he added to one of the "people" squares or a lifeguard's whistle to hang by the pool, or a ribbon and tassel turned into a bookmark for the square representing the library.

Each row of the quilt depicts a theme identified by members as a significant part of Sunnyvale, including transportation, flowers, people, safety, heath care, arts and recreation, agriculture, animals and insects, while the top third of the quilt is devoted to a sky scene with birds, clouds, spacecraft and the sun, all symbolizing the "opening to the future," May says.

Where May had no faces on the people figures, members placed eyes and smiles or even smaller figures to represent children next to larger, adult figures. All of the people on the quilt are different in shape, size, color, and background--just like the citizens of the city.

And stitched over the entire quilt are dozens of small hands in multicolored thread to represent the multicultural community.

"They are the hands building Sunnyvale," May says.

For more information on San Jose artist Therese May, visit www.theresemay.com or www.quiltpower.com. The Sunnyvale Community Quilt can be viewed at the Sunnyvale Senior Center, 550 E Remington Drive.