From Quilt to Public Art and Advocacy

Reimagining Stories Through Public Art

Stitching Stories Reimagined brings the original quilt to life as a 30-foot-long public art project. Designed for travel and permanent installation, this public art piece recreates the quilt’s stories using a mosaic wall, opposing mirror wall, and vinyl wrap.

As with the crocheted quilt, each square in the mosaic reflects one year of time served, highlighted with ribbons representing each woman’s struggles with addiction, domestic violence, sexual assault, mental health, COVID-19, children left behind, and the death of a loved one.

The mirror wall stands proudly in opposition, a chance for the viewer to stand in the place of one of the original quilt artists or the many women incarcerated in North Carolina today. The words surrounding the portraits are from workshops held in the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women and in the community with women in Arise Collective’s Women’s Reentry Project.