The Quilters

Just follow me.

Hi.

129, please.

I've been locked up for eight years,

and I have 14 years left for first degree assault.

This environment, it's a jungle.

So, I got to be a little more rough around the edges.

I'm the big bad wolf down here.

But I gotta be, or they eat you alive.

You know, that's just the way it is. We done Level 5.

So, down here, I'm all, "Move out of my way."

But it's a front.

Because up here, like, my emotions change when I walk through the door.

What up? Good morning. Morning.

Put that color thread on it.

I need to use the cutting table.

This gonna be my centerpiece.

I was thinking a white or gray. The front of the quilt has gray on it.

I might have just gotten a gray in that would work for that.

Whenever you get a chance,

Need a name on this so it can go on the quilt machine.

-What name would you like? -Here it is.

-You want burgundy? -No, red.

-You want dark red? -Yeah.

Okay.

Up right to here.

Hey, how are you doing?

The men in RJO make quilts for local foster kids.

They volunteer their time from 7:30 to 3:30, five days a week.

They may or may not have a date. They may not be going home.

So, uh, this is just their way of giving back.

Five months ago, a list of the foster children came in.

And I happened to see a young lady, her birthday… is the same as mine.

And it really stuck.

So, I started making the quilt.

A lot of these kids were told they'd never amount to anything.

They'd never be any good.

For them, this is my chance to give them something to say,

"Hey, we care about you."

And I could see a finished product, uh…

There's nothing that matches what I've got.

-This didn't come with no instructions. -Oh, no. It was just a picture.

This is kinda amazing. This is you. That's beautiful.

I just like patterns, designs like this.

That's beautiful.

-Yeah. -Yup.

Dang.

For this quilt, they wanted it '60s and hippie era.

Once this square gets completed,

this will go on.

Oops, wrong side.

This will go on this side.

And then this one will go along here.

There are nine, what we call blocks.

They have 81 pieces in each one of them.

Twelve rectangular blocks, 99 pieces in each one of those.

And then there are four large, just blocks of the whole quilt.

And they're 99 pieces a unit.

This turned out to be over 3,500 pieces, just for the front side.

It's March now, and I got to have it done by May 1st.

So…I'm hoping.

We teach how to cut the squares out.

See, the first basic thing we do,

we'll grid a quilt out.

It's key to do that before anything else.

Well, for me, when I start,

I'll see it in my head, but I can't grid things out.

Hmm.

A lot of times, and Ricky'll shoot me for this,

but I'll start cutting.

And then…

…wake up in the middle of the night.

That's when the gridding starts.

I don't go by patterns. I don't like copying.

I base mine off the color next to the color.

I like doing it that way. So, I claim it. It belongs to me.

So, what I do is,

I cut out what Imma do for my middle first.

My middle usually be about 50 by 30.

Once I get my 50/30, then I know that I need 30 more going up and down

to add to the 50,

and that's my 80.

Um, I don't, uh, actually know a whole lot myself

'cause I'm still kinda new.

So, which one you gonna do next?

Finish these two rows,

and then this is the next row that gets right below this one.

This piece, it's hard to tell which way it goes.

You're doing good. You see how none of your corners are pulling apart?

Organized chaos is the easiest way to describe that room.

-Who's got my cutter? -Yeah, bring that up here.

It's kind of like the little cartoon character

you see come in with a bunch of scissors and papers flying all over the place.

Something's totally off.

-I'm not liking this. -How the hell did you do that?

It's a process between cut, sew, iron,

cut, sew, iron, and you keep going in circles.

Then on to the next step. Gonna make the backing to it.

This'll be the whole backing for the, uh, butterfly quilt.

They gonna take it down to the quilt room,

and he gonna do his job.

Get ready to see a finished quilt.

All right, let's see.

-It's looking good. -Yo.

Hey, hey, hey.

There you go. Roll it on up.

In here, we're a little community within a big community.

This looks real good.

These are bigger. Getting ahead of myself.

Outside of RJO, you're amongst all the other guys.

But they don't even have a clue about how we feel up here.

Everybody don't grab it, but we-- we grab it.

These guys in here,

I love it being around every last one of them.

We got the same vibe, and we work off of each other.

Then we all got different flavors.

Fred like them colors.

This one goes…

Jimmy's got the stars.

They just beautiful.

Rod, he the material picker.

For me, this is my flavor. Butterflies.

If possible, can I show you this one I made right here?

I made this one just last week

for a girl.

I made this one.

If you're going seven-and-a-half, you just take,

like, an eighth off this side, eighth off this side, or a quarter…

-And it'll be right? -It'll be perfect.

-I ain't know that. I got it now, though. -Long, long time. Yep.

Ricky is a good teacher.

I mean, in a week,

you'll be making some of the best quilts that you thought you could never make.

If you need help on something,

or learn how to do something, Ricky's the main go-to.

He's never sewn before. He's gonna want to know how to do this.

You actually did pretty good on these.

It's scrap from his quilt, other quilts.

And I take 'em, then I slice 'em and dice 'em and sew them back together.

This is the master.

We learn from sensei.

You know, most of the people that's in here messed up bad, you know?

They're looking for, how would you say?

A purpose.

You put a little bit, now loosen it up. Turn it.

That is what you call, "complete."

I mean, I love what I'm doing.

I love taking care of the foster kids. That's what I love the most.

When I think about girls, I think about pinks, purple, green.

And then, when I think about the guys, I think about the blacks, yellows, blues.

I zone out, and I just sew.

This my out.

This my out, here. This what puts me on the outside.

When I do this here, I don't even be in here.

Not everyone can work here.

They must have no violations or write-ups.

I try not to think of what they did to get in here.

I treat them as a human because that's what they are.

My mother was my biggest thing that makes me do this.

You know, her mother, my grandma,

she made all their clothes and quilts out of patches.

And so, this is what my childhood brings to me.

You know, I was kind of young when I got locked up.

Put your finger right there. Hold that. Right in the corner. Now…

I'm 64 years old, now.

I got locked up when I was 20.

You know, I was just an asshole, and I messed up bad.

But I never had a bad background, had a good mother and father.

I had a good… good thing.

You just get mixed with the wrong people, and you, you know, make that mistake.

But we're away from that now.

Now, this is Jeremiah's first time ever making a quilt.

And you look at these points,

everything's on the money.

My first quilt.

So, that means I did my job.

-Mom, she'd be proud of that. -Yeah.

Oops, wrong side.

Spread that all the way over to there.

I've been down almost 38 years, right?

After a while, you get thinking about your family, you know?

And then when you get thinking about them, then the truth really comes out, you know?

Wow. All the stuff I did.

I was a drug addict.

Alcohol for me, you know?

My downfall came when I got about in my twenties.

And that's when I caught a… I caught a murder case.

I… Hey, I'm-- I'm guilty for what I did.

-Absolutely. -So…

-Taking responsibility, you know? -Yeah.

It's a shame that we didn't feel that and show that, you know,

prior to being in here.

And that-- And that is the hard pill to swallow.

True regret, you know.

I mean, after 30 years, you…

You know, it's just…

Yeah.I don't know.

Because, see, my mother means a lot to me, you know?

It's hard.

It's just hard to talk about.