As a history lecturer at Kapiolani Community College, Karen Tashiro Mead sometimes steps away from the big picture of wars, governments and societies in an attempt to engage her students in the importance of also preserving cultural and personal memories, starting with essays about their own family traditions.

“;Some say, 'I don't have any traditions,' but when they start to write it, they remember. One student talked about how a family name had tradition. Each generation took from it and passed it on and on.

“;One student had never thought about how important 'shogatsu,' the Japanese new year celebration, is to his family. It was only when he wrote it that he realized how important it is to pass these traditions to the next generation.”;

Rather than simply talking the talk, the exercise forced Mead to think about her own family traditions and the myriad ways that memories are passed on, not merely through photographs and stories, but via songs, shared experiences and objects that become family treasures.

In her case, what she treasures most are the quilts her mother, 94-year-old Sumie “;Jean”; Tashiro, has been piecing together over the past six or seven years, working full days to produce colorful 8-by-8-inch blocks of color, each from about 15 to 30 bits of scrap fabric, some no bigger than a fingernail. A full quilt comprises about 100 of those blocks, and Tashiro feels she's in a race against time to complete at least three more, including one for her 4-year-old great-granddaughter Elyse Suzuki.

Stitched into each are a trove of memories dating to Tashiro's childhood, when she first picked up needle and thread out of curiosity in watching her mother sew, up to the present, as Mead recalls the joy of playing with the doll clothes her mother sewed for her, combined with her own failed attempts at sewing or mastering any of her cultural traditions requiring nimble hands and limbs.

“;My mother tried her best to bring out my talents. I tried Japanese dancing, flower arrangement, tea ceremony, sewing. I always came back with the most horribly made things, but I do have her patience.”;

Simply talking about sewing brings back memories of the sort often forgotten in genealogies and formal histories, and lends color to larger social narratives.

Sumie Tashiro was born in 1914 to issei parents who lived and worked in a plantation camp near Hawi on the Big Island.

“;In those days there was no such as thing as you go and buy clothes. Most mothers made clothes for their children, and my mother used to sew. One day I told my mom, 'Let me try.'”;

Her mother used a Singer sewing machine, and one of the first things Sumie did was to put the needle halfway through one of her index fingers. That might have deterred any child from trying again, but once her father packed the wound with a poultice he made from chewing tobacco, Sumie was at it again, eventually entrusted with sewing kimonos for both her parents.

She got her own Singer machine just before World War II, which served her well for about 60 years. When she could no longer find parts to repair it, she half-heartedly switched to a Brother, which she's since grown accustomed to, although she says the level of control and evenness of stitching cannot compare to her old machine.

  EVEN WITH HER humble origins, the years of the Great Depression, which struck when she was in her early teens, stuck in her memory. “;I saw men on the street, and they hardly had any food.”;

Like many of her generation, she learned to treasure the things that so many take for granted today, such as the paper wrapped around fruit that arrived from Japan, which could be reused, just like with wax paper, aluminum foil and plastic bags.

“;Sometimes I waste food and feel so guilty that so many people are starving,”; she said. “;I ask God to forgive me. I guess everybody does that, waste food, but it's good to have gratitude in your heart as you pass through your day, so I tell my children, 'Don't forget gratitude.' You can't always repay the people who are kind to you or who help you. All you can do is help someone else, and somehow it filters down.”;

Mead remembers her mom sewed clothes for her dolls but not for her because the family had an abundance of hand-me-downs from friends, relatives and neighbors.

“;Everybody shared,”; she said. “;Back then, everyone was in the same economic situation. No one talked about class. It didn't mean anything then. Now it's a little different.”;

Mead grew up sleeping in bedsheets made of rice bags. Her mom had learned as a child to set them out on the grass overnight to be washed by dew.

“;I didn't know that wasn't the way things were supposed to be,”; Mead said.

Over the years, Sumie's closets and drawers also filled with swatches and scraps of fabric from friends who worked in muumuu factories. Pieces on her quilts seem to date as far back as the 1950s.

“;I treasure these things so I keep them nicely. I'm thankful that people gave me this material. Some are one-half inch. You'd be surprised how small they are,”; she said. “;Somehow I join and join, and somehow a design comes out.”;

“;My mom didn't want to talk about what she's doing,”; Mead said. “;She says there are other people older than her who do the same thing, but she can show people that even in your 90s you can learn and thrive and prosper in your own way.”;