Ricky—who is incarcerated at the South Central Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison south of St. Louis, serving a sentence for murder—is a devoted quilter. He’s a member of, and a mentor for, a group of inmates taking part in the prison’s Restorative Justice Organization (RJO), a program that allows them respite from the cell blocks. They spend 40 hours a week making birthday quilts for foster kids and kids with disabilities.
In The Quilters, director Jenifer McShane alternates between sequences of focused quilt-making in the prison’s fluorescent-lit sewing room and moments when the men in the RJO program reflect on they ended up in prison and what it means to make beautiful quilts for children with whom they can identify. “A lot of these foster kids were always told that they would never amount to anything,” Jimmy, another quilter, says. “This is my chance to say, hey, we care about you.”
The men’s commitment to the craft of quilting is total—they choose patterns, debate color combinations, and, under Ricky’s watchful eye, get the sewing just right. One quilt with an incorrectly oriented design had to be taken apart and totally resewn—with a birthday deadline fast approaching.
McShane uses montages of family photos to introduce us to the incarcerated men. They share their lives with McShane as they sew: Chill, a former upholsterer, is good at sewing leather and vinyl but had to learn how to, as he puts it, “mess with something lighter.” He’s drawn to butterfly motifs, he says, because his mother loved butterflies.
In the course of telling this story of the power of craft to change lives, McShane gained profound respect for her subjects. “There was such collaboration, concern, perfectionism, pride,” she told an interviewer in 2024. “And there was just this love and concern; it was really beautiful to observe.”
