While the Indiana Criminal Justice Association is meeting in Evansville today and tomorrow, a special display of quilts made by incarcerated men will be held at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. Over 60 quilts will be on display in the exhibit hall at Old National Events Plaza from 8-12 today (10/9) and tomorrow (10/10) from 1-4. admission is free.
The quilters are incarcerated men in the Purposeful Living Units Serve (P.L.U.S.) Program at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility (WVCF), a maximum security prison in Carlisle, Indiana. There are some serious quilters in this group. The group has made quilts for the families of every Hoosier soldier who died in the line of duty.
The inmates who are serving time for having committed the worst sorts of violent crimes (some of them are incarcerated for life without parole) are not the type you usually visualize when you think about quilters. Of course, stereotypes are always wrong, but clichéd views of both quilters and prison inmates would be utterly off the mark in the case of the WVCF’s P.L.U.S. Program quilters.
