PRISON QUILTS ARE COMFORT TO CHILDREN, DOMESTIC ABUSE VICTIMS

CUMBERLAND, Md. (AP) -- They come to the visitor center three times a week
with a singular purpose: to piece together colorful swatches of fabric.

They will cut and stitch and turn rags into rich and glorious quilts that
will comfort the sick and forlorn and give their own spirits a boost.

The eight men belong to a quilting club at the minimum-security Federal
Prison Camp in western Maryland. Some savor the artistic challenge of
designing and creating a quilt from heaps of donated fabric.
Thirty-year-old Jason Haigh discovered other reasons to be proud of his
handiwork.

"It has a calming influence," says Haigh, who is serving a
12-and-a-half-year sentence for drug conspiracy. "I haven't actually done
anything positive in a long time. Some of my guys kind of give me a hard
time but it doesn't matter. I do it for me, not for them."

There was initial reluctance to join this unlikeliest of prison clubs, but
only until the men learned where the quilts were going. About three dozen
quilts were donated to Project Linus, a national charity connected to
children's hospitals. Two dozen more went to the Family Crisis Resource
Center, which helps victims of domestic abuse.

"I have a little boy, four years old this year, and I kind of thought,
'What if he were sick and he got a quilt?' It would be kind of nice if he
got something to hold on to," Haigh says.

The prison club was formed two years ago by a member of the local
Schoolhouse Quilters Guild. Since Todd Adams, a drug offender, learned how
to cut and stitch, he has made nine or 10 quilts of increasing complexity.
He has also become a teacher.

An inmate's first quilt goes to charity; his second goes home.

Kenneth Yount sent one home to Orange, Va., when his first grandchild, also
named Kenneth, was born. The baby died three months later of crib death. He
was buried in the quilt.

"I got down on my knees and prayed and it came to me that a part of me will
always be with him," Yount says.

Two quilts the inmates produced as group projects display other sorrows.
One, called "To Daddy With Love," features 22 panels derived from letters
and multicolored crayon drawings made by prisoners' children.

"I love you, Dad. I wish you could come home tomorrow," says a stick-figure
girl in one of the panels.

"Memories of Men Behind Bars" incorporates 33 images: a guitar behind bars,
a rose encircled by thorns and Reginald Johnson's cryptic sketch of a
courtroom, captioned, "Judge me by twelve before you carry me with six."

"I guess I had a little attitude with the justice system," Johnson says.

The men are learning that skill comes at a price.

"You sit there in front of the machine and if you slip a little bit, you
can put the needle through your finger," Yount says, "so you've got to pay
attention to what you're doing."

The quilts have won prizes at contests sponsored by the Schoolhouse
Quilters Guild, some of whose members volunteer as quilting coaches at the
250-bed prison camp.

"To be perfectly honest, the first time we came, we were a little nervous,"
says coach Linda Leathersich. "But we felt comfortable right from the first
week and have never had any second thoughts."

Steven Finger, executive assistant for the prison camp and adjacent
medium-security prison, said quilting is just one of the community-service
projects inmates are encouraged to join. Others have planted trees,
rehabilitated low-income housing and maintained the nearby C&O Canal
National Historical Park.

The prison quilters are not paid -- they have other jobs in the institution
- -- and the handiwork doesn't reduce their prison time, Finger says. "But it
does help the inmates stay connected with the community and it helps
increase their self-esteem and their sense of self-worth," he says.

Yount, whose tattoos cover his muscular arms and creep up his neck, admits
he hesitated before joining the club.

"Where I come from, if a man goes to quilt, he's a sissy," says Yount, a
42-year-old drug offender who is eligible for release in 2003. "Now I guess
I'll be a sissy all my life because I'm going to do it when I get home."