For hours each day, these prison inmates make personalized quilts for children in foster care https://t.co/nfOwsP8ole
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 18, 2021
We can be more than the sum of our worst days…
Fred Brown was 25 years into a 15-years-to-life prison sentence when he discovered that he enjoyed cutting out fabric squares of princesses and Care Bears and sewing them into quilts.
“When I was a kid [in Chicago], my mom sewed drapes, but I never thought of sewing as something I’d want to do myself,” said Brown, 66, an inmate at the South Central Correctional Center in Licking, Mo.
As he started quilting in the correctional center’s sewing room, he was struck by a newfound respect for the craft.
“I learned quickly that women who have sewn all their lives are mathematical geniuses,” he said. “It takes a lot of math to calculate your seam allowances. And the angles and circles. There’s a lot that goes into it.”
Brown, who is serving time for armed kidnapping and rape, said he began sewing four years ago when he heard about a small group of inmates who gathered daily in South Central’s sewing room to volunteer to make quilts for charitable organizations and children in foster homes.
“When I learned that I could help bring a smile to a child’s face, I was all in,” he said. “Right now, I’m working on a puppy quilt that will go to a 13-year-old boy. I don’t know anything about him, but I have a feeling he’s going to love this quilt.”
Brown’s latest creation is among more than 2,000 quilts that have been made by inmates from fabric donated to the prison in the last decade, said Joe Satterfield, a prison case manager at South Central who oversees the program…
Most of the men who participate in the program are fathers, he said, and more than a few have known the uncertainty of growing up in foster care.
“They can relate because they’ve been there,” Satterfield said. “It gives them comfort and satisfaction to know that a quilt they’ve made is going to a child who may not get another birthday present.”…
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