The Quilt That Inspired a Movement
The History
Stitching Stories: A Prison Awareness Quilt was crocheted with love by the H.A.T.S. (Handmade and Totally Special) group at the minimum-security Canary Unit of the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women (NCCIW). H.A.T.S. is a group of women who volunteer their time to crochet for charity, raising money for Our Children’s Place of Coastal Horizonsand Arise Collective’s MATCH program (Mothers and Their Children) at the prison. The women knew the crochet arts had the power to make a positive difference in society.
They envisioned a quilt that might tell the stories of the women around them – stories of women doing time for fighting back in situations of domestic violence; stories of complex entanglements; stories of children left behind during prison sentences; and stories of lifers being held in prison for more than 30 years with no release date, but being allowed to work jobs outside the prison walls.
In the fall of 2019, the quilt began to take shape. The crocheters decided that every square would represent a year that a woman had served behind bars. The ribbons used would symbolize the individual struggles that each woman had overcome: addiction, mental health, domestic violence, sexual assault, and/or serious health issues. Knowing that incarceration impacts family systems, the smaller white bows would represent each child left at home, and black bows would represent each loved one who had passed away during the woman’s time behind bars.
Stitching Stories: A Prison Awareness Quilt was born.
The Quilt
In March 2020, COVID hit the world, North Carolina, and the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women (NCCIW). Visitations and classes at prisons were canceled. Women could no longer go out to work. In the minimum custody unit where the women were creating the Stitching Stories Quilt, 103 incarcerated women contracted COVID in just one week. All of those women survived COVID with one painful exception.
As the women of H.A.T.S. sat for month after month living with the restrictions of COVID in prison, the vision for Stitching Stories shifted: the quilt would tell the story of a representative group of women who survived COVID together, and it would memorialize the one among them who did not.
The women who crocheted Stitching Stories finished the quilt just before Mother’s Day 2021. North Carolina prisons were still under COVID restrictions, and the quilt became a way for the women at the Canary Unit of NCCIW to honor each other on a Mother’s Day that marked more than a year of being unable to physically see their children and families. Women at the unit were invited to tie the ribbons and bows on each other’s squares.
The Original Quilt Artists
Before we entered prison, we gave little thought to this segment of society and assumed incarcerated folks were deserving of their fate. We didn’t consider the children they left behind, their home life, their financial situation, or their mental health. It didn’t cross our minds if they’d suffered from abuse or struggled with addiction. We judged them by a three-minute clip on the news or an article in the newspaper if we thought of them at all.
Then “we” became “them.” What we came to understand as incarcerated women ourselves is that we are more alike than we are different. By sharing our stories, the outcome of our histories began to make more sense. And while it didn’t excuse or justify our actions, it helped us understand that we are not bad people and are not alone. Our stories created bonds between us. In turn, this allows us to lend hope and healing to others as they come through the gates of prison.
The Stitching Stories Quilt is the collective effort of a small group of women with a big vision. The crochet arts allowed us to tell individual stories and present a collective narrative. We want the world to know we are more than the numbers of mass incarceration – we are individual women with personhood. We are mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, and more.
We are you.
Saida Elizondo
Violet Vargo
Shirlye Grandy
