The Quilters (2024) Movie Script
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.
SoI'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.
All right, guys, we got a package in.
Okay, what's in the box?
That's the way he said it,
"Hey, we got a package."
Everything we have in here is donated.
If it wasn't for people with big hearts
donating to us,
we wouldn't be able to do this. Uh
This shelf here,
this is mainly just kid stuff.
We got some cartoonish donuts.
Music, a piece with pianos on it.
Some more food. We got peanuts.
We got bacon too. Yeah.
This is our filler that we make
for the weighted blankets
and the weighted vests
for the autistic children.
Guys ain't supposed to come past this door
because right here, we have tools.
We have scissors, we have rotary cutters.
As they call 'em, sharps.
Anything that has a sharp point to it,
you know?
'Cause, they don't want anybody
just running around with these, you know?
When they come in in the morning,
they sign the tool log.
Potter, that's standing right there,
it's his tool bag.
This is assigned to him.
We've got a master inventory right here,
it tells you what's in this bag too,
so when he's out there,
just in case his bag turns up missing,
which he's responsible.
Thankfully, we've never had any
turn up missing.
When I was younger,
I had learned how to sew,
but I was doing upholstery.
I had opened up my own upholstery shop.
I never did this kind of sewing.
Mine was always with leather and vinyl.
With that vinyl and that leather,
you've got to pull and tug.
And this is more soft.
Oops. I made a little boo-boo.
An oopsie.
It took me about a week and a half
to kinda have my hands
to mess with something lighter.
Yup, Imma go iron this.
I had made this other butterfly quilt,
and this one was so beautiful.
We called it Firefly
with some other colors that were in.
It was so beautiful.
My mother loved butterflies.
It just so happen.
So that's why I love butterflies.
Every time I do butterflies,
I straight think of her.
The most thing she asked me to do is,
don't go back to the person
that I used to be.
Don't have that anger. Be more patient,
and be more understanding
and compassionate.
And just because somebody
do something bad to you,
don't mean that you need
to do it right back to them.
It's going to sound a little weird saying,
but when I call home,
my people, they hear it in my voice.
And just the conversations that we have,
they're like,
"You done changed. You made it."
I'm like, "Yeah, I done made it."
All butterflies.
-He's got that down now, you see.
-Mm-hmm.
'Cause he's going just to the triangles.
I've got a headache.
You got a bottle of Tylenol?
I need the whole bottle.
I'm just bouncing
from colors and patterns, and
I do not know what I'm doing today.
I'm
When
I'm old, and I've got to get myself
straightened out.
I got 17 more massive blocks like that
I gotta make.
And I spent all night
doing my little sketches.
When things bother me in my head,
I sit up and do that.
The deadline's in two weeks,
and I am sweating every minute.
Ah.
Like, shit!
I screwed up.
Every row was sewn together
the wrong direction.
I have to take all the rows apart,
flip them the other way,
and then sew them back together.
So I got to pull
two of these large squares all apart,
flip them, and resew them.
This was not in today's
Well, he gets
a little frustrated at times.
Kinda tough for you, huh?
-Actually, they need to be ironed first.
-I can do that real quick.
-Okay.
-Or however long it takes.
Yup. It shouldn't take too long.
When my time on this '60s quilt
started drifting away on me
Potter stepped up.
You're doing great.
Look at that. Every one of them's spot on.
He gets it done, quickly.
He shocks you.
You did your first two,
set them over on the side.
-Okay, just do two at a time?
-Exactly.
-Okay. Okay.
-You got it.
I'm ready.
If I were to look at my younger self,
I would say that we should be more focused
on being here to help others.
And
it was losing my son in 2000
that brought that about.
My son passed away at 15.
Needed a heart and lung transplant.
And here I was at the age of 40,
in prison.
I had nothing but the remorse of guilt.
Being here and what we do,
helps keep me focused.
And when I'm focused,
you don't think about those things.
Hey, I need you to sharpen my scissors.
They're just getting old, getting worn.
Yeah, felt like it had
chunks missing out of it.
-Don't you dare.
-He almost got had, baby.
Oh, shit.
-Cut you a hole in your arm.
-Ricky fixing to get dommed.
Oh!
-Yeah.
-We'll have Ricky put the vest on.
-Maybe it'll give him a calming effect.
-Anything to slow him down.
-Looks good on you, Ricky.
-Thank you, Rod.
One minute.
Oh, you make a good mannequin.
This one's a six-pounder.
Good for up to a 60-pound kid.
They're going to an autistic school.
Here's the, uh
Here's one of the responses we had
from one that we had sent for these kids.
Says, uh, "Hello.
I'm one of the workers in a home,
and I see the boys a lot
who receive the gifts."
"The oldest reported it being
the best Christmas he ever had,
and was very happy."
"The youngest,
who is severely autistic, loves his,
and has currently taken over
the living room as his own playroom."
"She thanks you very much,
and she appreciated it greatly."
"She reported never seeing them so happy."
That gets me.
Mr. Potter.
-Yes.
-You wanna come with me?
Yes. I will follow you, Fred.
-I've got this laid out.
-Nice.
And right there,
and
-That's wild.
-Yeah.
Looks like it. Like this piece
comes right here and back around.
-Yeah.
-It's coming along.
I think accidentally,
this is gonna come out pretty cool.
Yeah, I think so.
-Whenever you ready.
-All right.
-Okay, we got to get these ready.
-Yeah.
Okay.
You took that one right on down.
Okay.
-You got a key now?
-You want me to rat on him?
They'll like them.
Fred's gone.
The other day, Fred got a write-up,
and they had to put him out.
He used to work on stuff in the cell.
He got caught with a little razor blade,
cutting clothes and fixing them.
And it's kind of hard.
If you don't keep your mind in here
and try to keep this
you'll fall like he did.
I mean, he was a dang good worker.
You know, it's just that sometimes
you get away, you get rolled up.
And around here, anybody can get rolled up
and get put down there.
And then you can't come up here.
Without Fred,
I think it's gonna be different.
Don't forget where we at, you know?
We all ain't perfect, but we trying.
We just trying to do better.
Maybe he needed
a couple more steps to do better.
That's all, you know.
Hey, Paul. Dropping off the '60s quilt.
Hold up.
The heck.
It's fucking messed up.
We gotta stop.
All right, let's get this off here.
We gotta take it back down and get it off.
Ah, we got a problem.
We gotta get it done
before the end of the week.
Look at this.
The material wasn't stretched out
all the way.
And when it's not,
it'll leave little buckles.
And something like that, I can't pass.
'Cause this is--
Somebody's going to keep for a long time.
We gotta take the whole thing off.
Boy, this one is pinched bad.
Oh, Fred. Holy shit.
Grab that. Bring this over.
There's so many squares.
You got some of that?
Just a little bitty square.
The same kind of material.
-Those green pieces?
-No. It can't be green.
-Okay.
-Yeah, that's it. Okay.
Fred get a chance to see it?
-Uh-uh.
-He ain't get a chance to see it yet.
All right, we need to put this back on.
See, it's gone.
It's all gone.
See how easy that is? No big deal.
Well, it's up!
High as I'm going to get it.
All right, let's show the back.
We had a little setback.
All right. Now we're back.
Ricky's gonna be lost.
He's gonna be heartbroken when I leave.
-Yeah.
-I'll be going to a lower level.
And hopefully in five years, I'll be home.
Or less.
We've been around for many years.
We've been doing time
for almost 25 years together.
-We're not gonna be--
-We'll never lose touch.
It's hard when somebody you like leaves,
you know?
After many years, like I said,
I watch people leave like I told you,
for almost going on 40 years.
-You know? And it's hard.
-Mm-hmm.
Who knows?
One day, they might send me out of here.
Hopefully.
But then, like, say, do you deserve--
I did what I did.
And I tell everybody that.
And I can't imagine how the family feels.
Oh, I can't.
But, you know,
it's just something you just gotta
hope they can forgive,
like I forgive myself, you know?
So, it's mostly
Most guys can't forgive themselves.
That's why they can't change.
Because that demon's still in 'em.
You gotta be able to forgive yourself
before you can forgive anybody else.
Just like you gotta be able
to love yourself
before you love anybody.
-You know?
-You have to be able to do that.
Because I can stand up and testify
that I let my demon out
a few times in prison.
And I'm not proud of it, you know?
But you just gotta
You gotta let it go, you know?
If you don't, it'll eat you up.
Hey, White.
Yeah. Dang!
Golly.
They got them.
Wow.
"express my appreciation
to Mr. White, 'Chill,'
and other men who are sewing quilts."
Golly!
-Hey, that's good.
-Ain't it?
That's really nice.
Awesome.
Now I'll get the stapler
and put it up on the board.
See, these are-- these were precut.
-They're not straight
-72,16.
No, they're not supposed to be
I'll go ahead and trim this off,
and put the other one on top of that
Here's jet black.
I like the design of it, though.
Really neat.
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.
SoI'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.
All right, guys, we got a package in.
Okay, what's in the box?
That's the way he said it,
"Hey, we got a package."
Everything we have in here is donated.
If it wasn't for people with big hearts
donating to us,
we wouldn't be able to do this. Uh
This shelf here,
this is mainly just kid stuff.
We got some cartoonish donuts.
Music, a piece with pianos on it.
Some more food. We got peanuts.
We got bacon too. Yeah.
This is our filler that we make
for the weighted blankets
and the weighted vests
for the autistic children.
Guys ain't supposed to come past this door
because right here, we have tools.
We have scissors, we have rotary cutters.
As they call 'em, sharps.
Anything that has a sharp point to it,
you know?
'Cause, they don't want anybody
just running around with these, you know?
When they come in in the morning,
they sign the tool log.
Potter, that's standing right there,
it's his tool bag.
This is assigned to him.
We've got a master inventory right here,
it tells you what's in this bag too,
so when he's out there,
just in case his bag turns up missing,
which he's responsible.
Thankfully, we've never had any
turn up missing.
When I was younger,
I had learned how to sew,
but I was doing upholstery.
I had opened up my own upholstery shop.
I never did this kind of sewing.
Mine was always with leather and vinyl.
With that vinyl and that leather,
you've got to pull and tug.
And this is more soft.
Oops. I made a little boo-boo.
An oopsie.
It took me about a week and a half
to kinda have my hands
to mess with something lighter.
Yup, Imma go iron this.
I had made this other butterfly quilt,
and this one was so beautiful.
We called it Firefly
with some other colors that were in.
It was so beautiful.
My mother loved butterflies.
It just so happen.
So that's why I love butterflies.
Every time I do butterflies,
I straight think of her.
The most thing she asked me to do is,
don't go back to the person
that I used to be.
Don't have that anger. Be more patient,
and be more understanding
and compassionate.
And just because somebody
do something bad to you,
don't mean that you need
to do it right back to them.
It's going to sound a little weird saying,
but when I call home,
my people, they hear it in my voice.
And just the conversations that we have,
they're like,
"You done changed. You made it."
I'm like, "Yeah, I done made it."
All butterflies.
-He's got that down now, you see.
-Mm-hmm.
'Cause he's going just to the triangles.
I've got a headache.
You got a bottle of Tylenol?
I need the whole bottle.
I'm just bouncing
from colors and patterns, and
I do not know what I'm doing today.
I'm
When
I'm old, and I've got to get myself
straightened out.
I got 17 more massive blocks like that
I gotta make.
And I spent all night
doing my little sketches.
When things bother me in my head,
I sit up and do that.
The deadline's in two weeks,
and I am sweating every minute.
Ah.
Like, shit!
I screwed up.
Every row was sewn together
the wrong direction.
I have to take all the rows apart,
flip them the other way,
and then sew them back together.
So I got to pull
two of these large squares all apart,
flip them, and resew them.
This was not in today's
Well, he gets
a little frustrated at times.
Kinda tough for you, huh?
-Actually, they need to be ironed first.
-I can do that real quick.
-Okay.
-Or however long it takes.
Yup. It shouldn't take too long.
When my time on this '60s quilt
started drifting away on me
Potter stepped up.
You're doing great.
Look at that. Every one of them's spot on.
He gets it done, quickly.
He shocks you.
You did your first two,
set them over on the side.
-Okay, just do two at a time?
-Exactly.
-Okay. Okay.
-You got it.
I'm ready.
If I were to look at my younger self,
I would say that we should be more focused
on being here to help others.
And
it was losing my son in 2000
that brought that about.
My son passed away at 15.
Needed a heart and lung transplant.
And here I was at the age of 40,
in prison.
I had nothing but the remorse of guilt.
Being here and what we do,
helps keep me focused.
And when I'm focused,
you don't think about those things.
Hey, I need you to sharpen my scissors.
They're just getting old, getting worn.
Yeah, felt like it had
chunks missing out of it.
-Don't you dare.
-He almost got had, baby.
Oh, shit.
-Cut you a hole in your arm.
-Ricky fixing to get dommed.
Oh!
-Yeah.
-We'll have Ricky put the vest on.
-Maybe it'll give him a calming effect.
-Anything to slow him down.
-Looks good on you, Ricky.
-Thank you, Rod.
One minute.
Oh, you make a good mannequin.
This one's a six-pounder.
Good for up to a 60-pound kid.
They're going to an autistic school.
Here's the, uh
Here's one of the responses we had
from one that we had sent for these kids.
Says, uh, "Hello.
I'm one of the workers in a home,
and I see the boys a lot
who receive the gifts."
"The oldest reported it being
the best Christmas he ever had,
and was very happy."
"The youngest,
who is severely autistic, loves his,
and has currently taken over
the living room as his own playroom."
"She thanks you very much,
and she appreciated it greatly."
"She reported never seeing them so happy."
That gets me.
Mr. Potter.
-Yes.
-You wanna come with me?
Yes. I will follow you, Fred.
-I've got this laid out.
-Nice.
And right there,
and
-That's wild.
-Yeah.
Looks like it. Like this piece
comes right here and back around.
-Yeah.
-It's coming along.
I think accidentally,
this is gonna come out pretty cool.
Yeah, I think so.
-Whenever you ready.
-All right.
-Okay, we got to get these ready.
-Yeah.
Okay.
You took that one right on down.
Okay.
-You got a key now?
-You want me to rat on him?
They'll like them.
Fred's gone.
The other day, Fred got a write-up,
and they had to put him out.
He used to work on stuff in the cell.
He got caught with a little razor blade,
cutting clothes and fixing them.
And it's kind of hard.
If you don't keep your mind in here
and try to keep this
you'll fall like he did.
I mean, he was a dang good worker.
You know, it's just that sometimes
you get away, you get rolled up.
And around here, anybody can get rolled up
and get put down there.
And then you can't come up here.
Without Fred,
I think it's gonna be different.
Don't forget where we at, you know?
We all ain't perfect, but we trying.
We just trying to do better.
Maybe he needed
a couple more steps to do better.
That's all, you know.
Hey, Paul. Dropping off the '60s quilt.
Hold up.
The heck.
It's fucking messed up.
We gotta stop.
All right, let's get this off here.
We gotta take it back down and get it off.
Ah, we got a problem.
We gotta get it done
before the end of the week.
Look at this.
The material wasn't stretched out
all the way.
And when it's not,
it'll leave little buckles.
And something like that, I can't pass.
'Cause this is--
Somebody's going to keep for a long time.
We gotta take the whole thing off.
Boy, this one is pinched bad.
Oh, Fred. Holy shit.
Grab that. Bring this over.
There's so many squares.
You got some of that?
Just a little bitty square.
The same kind of material.
-Those green pieces?
-No. It can't be green.
-Okay.
-Yeah, that's it. Okay.
Fred get a chance to see it?
-Uh-uh.
-He ain't get a chance to see it yet.
All right, we need to put this back on.
See, it's gone.
It's all gone.
See how easy that is? No big deal.
Well, it's up!
High as I'm going to get it.
All right, let's show the back.
We had a little setback.
All right. Now we're back.
Ricky's gonna be lost.
He's gonna be heartbroken when I leave.
-Yeah.
-I'll be going to a lower level.
And hopefully in five years, I'll be home.
Or less.
We've been around for many years.
We've been doing time
for almost 25 years together.
-We're not gonna be--
-We'll never lose touch.
It's hard when somebody you like leaves,
you know?
After many years, like I said,
I watch people leave like I told you,
for almost going on 40 years.
-You know? And it's hard.
-Mm-hmm.
Who knows?
One day, they might send me out of here.
Hopefully.
But then, like, say, do you deserve--
I did what I did.
And I tell everybody that.
And I can't imagine how the family feels.
Oh, I can't.
But, you know,
it's just something you just gotta
hope they can forgive,
like I forgive myself, you know?
So, it's mostly
Most guys can't forgive themselves.
That's why they can't change.
Because that demon's still in 'em.
You gotta be able to forgive yourself
before you can forgive anybody else.
Just like you gotta be able
to love yourself
before you love anybody.
-You know?
-You have to be able to do that.
Because I can stand up and testify
that I let my demon out
a few times in prison.
And I'm not proud of it, you know?
But you just gotta
You gotta let it go, you know?
If you don't, it'll eat you up.
Hey, White.
Yeah. Dang!
Golly.
They got them.
Wow.
"express my appreciation
to Mr. White, 'Chill,'
and other men who are sewing quilts."
Golly!
-Hey, that's good.
-Ain't it?
That's really nice.
Awesome.
Now I'll get the stapler
and put it up on the board.
See, these are-- these were precut.
-They're not straight
-72,16.
No, they're not supposed to be
I'll go ahead and trim this off,
and put the other one on top of that
Here's jet black.
I like the design of it, though.
Really neat.