By Fiona Harrigan

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Inside the maximum security prison in Licking, Missouri, a group of men spend eight hours a day, five days a week, sewing quilts for local foster kids. “They may not be going home” from prison, says Joe Satterfield, the man in charge of the program that has these inmates quilting. As director Jenifer McShane explores in her documentary The Quilters, those circumstances don’t stop the inmates from contributing to the world outside—and experiencing the restorative effects of creating beautiful things.

We meet a man who calls himself a “big bad wolf” outside the sewing room, but who adds butterflies to quilts because they remind him of his mother. One man begins to make a quilt for a foster kid who shares his birthday, feeling a connection. Another sketches a quilt pattern in the middle of the night, inspired beyond the sewing room.

The film doesn’t let you forget the grim environment where it’s set (although it doesn’t provide much detail on what got its characters in prison). One quilter is removed from the program after getting caught cutting and repairing clothes with a razor blade in his cell. But the setting is what makes the quilters’ commitment to their craft, personal improvement, and the broader community so powerful.