♪ - This quilt was made by incarcerated women at the Canary Unit during COVID, and each woman's section is represented by a color block.

And within each color block, each individual square represents a year of incarceration.

So this was a joint effort between a number of people during COVID to represent their experience of incarceration to build awareness for that.

And Shirlye is actually an original quilt artist who was in charge of, sort of had sort of the idea for this and assisted in putting everything together and making it happen.

- I think of my incarceration as kind of like an incomplete death.

I died, but I really didn't die, but, you know, there was resurrection.

- We've known each other for quite a long time.

We've done a lot of time together.

- We interviewed different residents of the Canary Unit.

- And they would sit with you and talk about their families and their hopes and dreams.

And it was a beautiful thing.

And it really brought us all together.

You got to see people, not just for what they were doing in there, but you could see who the person really was, like, who they loved and what they hoped for.

- [Shirlye] Each square symbolizes a year in the life of a woman who is incarcerated.

The different colors are different people.

- As you can see, like there's births and there's deaths, and it's all symbolized by these little ribbons on here.

A lot of the colors are addiction, substance abuse.

- Our first death was someone that we all knew very well.

Her name was Faye Brown.

This was kind of like a tribute to her.

- On Faye Brown's squares, she has all these white ribbons.

And people who were incarcerated with us, they wanted to be sure they tied a ribbon onto that because Faye was like a mother to everybody and she loved everybody.

Even the people that didn't want to participate, they showed up to tie the ribbon.

The title of the, or the name of the quilt, "Stitching Stories," was like, "Well, we're stitching their stories together."

And then the chaplain had talked about, "Well, she could take it to a couple of churches or something and display it."

And that was great.

You know, it was like, "Wow, it's getting out there."

And so then it turned into this.

[inspirational music] We have a fourth creator who is still behind bars.

- [Phone Recording] North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women.

This call will be monitored and recorded.

To accept this call, press five now.

- Hello?

- [Hope] Hey, Shirlye.

- How are you, Hope?

- [Hope] [chuckles] Hey, how are you?

- Good, good, so we have Violet and Saida- - Hey!

- Hey-ho!

- Hi.

- Hey, y'all.

- How you doing?

- The gang's all back together again.

I know we only have 15 minutes with you.

What are your thoughts about this quilt and how it started out and where we are now?

- It's an emotional project.

I wanted to be able to edu- - [Phone Recording] This call is from a North Carolina correctional facility.

- Educate the public about women that are here in prison, about the time they've spent, the reasons they're here, the people they've left behind.

- And this was Saida's project, which was developed originally in HATS.

- HATS is a program that was introduced into the prison system for people that wanted to crochet items and just donate.

My reason for joining HATS was because I had no way to, you know, give back to the community.

- You know, a lot of people donate things into the prison to help us, and so we wanted to donate something back with our time and our talent.

- During COVID, our class was canceled.

We were like pretty much on our beds in our bunks in our area 24 hours a day.

We did not go outside.

There was no recreation.

There was no sunlight.

But they were just trying to get a handle, because the minimum where we were, over half the women were infected with COVID.

- We couldn't have visits.

You know, we had a phone that, like 120 people used one phone, so it was really hard to talk to your families or anybody.

We were forgotten and we felt like people thought that, "Well, they're criminals," like, not human anymore.

What we wanted to convey in the "Stitching Stories" quilt was that we are people and we are suffering and we want to be seen.

- I would just sit on my bunk and I would be crocheting and just, like, the day would be gone and it just took off.

It just... Everybody wanted to be a part of it.

- Now, where do I come into this?

So Arise Collective, two years ago, put out a call for artists, and the goal for the call was to get an artist team together in order to commemorate this quilt and to memorialize it into a permanent form.

- Arise Collective is a nonprofit that works with women in prison both before and after their release.

So as we had this huge quilt that we were taking across the state, it was very clear.

I mean, it could get dirty.

Yarn itself is going to decay.

The original quilt is called "Stitching Stories: A Prison Awareness Quilt."

The public art is called "Stitching Stories Reimagined."

And got to review eight or nine different public artists and we narrowed it down to three.

We couldn't get it down any smaller than that.

The proposals were so compelling.

The case that Carlos made, mosaics, which was that mosaics represented the shattering of something like a stone, right, and that the women's lives had been shattered in some way, but with all of those pieces, were able to be put back together through mosaics, then bringing in Eliza, who has both trauma background and experience, but being able to use the folded poetry as another one of those media that could undergird and underlie all of the mosaics.

With David, David Wilson, the public artist with his mirrors, the piece that we really wanted to portray about people who were viewing the art being able to see themselves in the stories of the women.

- You know, the two sides of the container could dialogue and speak with one another.

So if you were looking at the mosaic folded poetry that was directly in response to the "Stitching Stories" quilt, there could be other individuals who were inside the container as well who could see you and other people looking at this mosaic piece through the reflection on the mirror wall.

And then vice versa, when you turned around and took in the graphic composition that's overlayered on the mirrored acrylic, you could see the folded mosaic piece behind you, right?

So the two pieces now become this talking point with you in the central middle part taking it all in.

- My portion of the project is the substrate, which is being made out of a high density foam, and it's designed to create this wave-like effect to evoke the feeling of it being a flowing surface, like a quilt.

That's the intention behind the design, is to look like, take something that is non-organic and make it look very organic and flowing.

One of the ways that we incorporated the women's voices into this project was through the use of workshops, and they were with currently and formerly incarcerated women.

For the workshops, I used cardboard and I used yarn because those are things that are allowed in prison.

I asked the women to reflect on their personal life experiences and I asked them to write about those things on the forms themselves.

- [Shirlye] The women had the opportunity to express some of the things they were feeling during incarceration or, like, if they lost a loved one.

- Like I said, I want to do better and I want the world to be better, so... - And then the overall expression of what was achieved during the workshops is the same design as the final quilt wall.

- Doing great.

[soft gentle music] - As long as they're matching and everything is, like, the angle it's supposed to be, so I think everything in this quilt looks really good though.

- And then with Carlos, mosaic tile, we created one of the years in our story that's on the board.

He kind of showed us how to do mosaic tile.

It's an incredible art.

- Just want to know that we are you, that we've heard that message, and that message is gonna be represented so everybody can hear, not just on video, they can visually see this piece of art.

They talked about experiences, they broke materials, which is the medium of mosaics.

That's one of the fun things about it, that it's you don't have to be too serious.

So it was really good for them to come out and actually make their own piece, that it integrates at the end of the day with all the rest of the pieces.

[soft inspirational music] - [Eliza] We want this message to be able to be heard and seen and experienced more than just in this area.

So what we decided upon was to have the work live in a shipping container to be an art experience rather than just an art object.

- When we unveiled the project, first of all, I was moved to tears.

- We hope for a world in which previously and intentionally silent stories may be amplified, unfounded judgements dissolve, healing is possible, and truth conquers stigma.

May "Stitching Stories" stir compassion in those who have never walked behind bars and offer dignity and visibility to those who have and still do.

[audience claps] - This really also benefits all of society.

We are only as strong as the most vulnerable among us.

And as we lift them up and pull them up, all of us are benefited by that.

We're benefited by having neighbors who have good jobs, their kids are safe, they're able to be contributing members of society, pay their taxes.

All of those things that we ask of our citizenry is absolutely possible for women who have been incarcerated.

- So I feel very honored to be in a space with these amazing women.

I never thought when we unveiled it in prison and we tied the ribbons on, that it would ever get this big, that that would just be for us.

And I never thought, number one, that I would ever go to prison, I have to say that, and didn't have something amazing come out of that.

I learned that life is not over 'cause you go to prison.

Good things and good people come out.

And we are just like everybody else.

We're like every other woman, mother, child, sister, wife.

We just made some bad choices, and that shouldn't impair us forever.

- I was thinking that while I was in there and I'm doing all these things, "Okay, I'ma be, you know, I'ma be really successful when I get out."

And when I got out, I was really crushed, like, just going and putting in applications, and you don't even get an application because you're a felon.

- Right, yeah.

- Like, you're not even given the option.

But you know, you just have to never give up and keep pushing forward, and no matter how many times the world tells you no, just keep going.

Be positive.

- If you could add anything to the quilt now, what would that be?

- [Hope] I would want to add more and more and more because there's still women here who should not be here.

- I hope that it shows the general public that we are people, we're not a number, and what we can do as people.

[gentle music] [gentle music continues]