In Jail, Sewing Is an Escape

They call themselves the Twin Towers Sewing Circle.

Candy Love, a 37-year-old inmate at the Los Angeles County jail and a swift seamstress, sat at a table embroidering muslin. It would become the smiling face of a doll.

Sheriff’s Deputy Myrtle Everage, the guard who watches over Love and her 50 or so fellow doll-makers, circled the room, giving gentle suggestions on colors and materials for the tiny dresses.

“You got a lot of freedom in the use of color,” Love said.

Under the hum of fluorescent lights in cramped rooms, the women gather daily to craft about 5,000 dolls each year for disadvantaged children. The dolls are distributed in December through sheriff’s stations, elementary schools, and some of the religious and civic organizations that donate the material for the dolls in the first place.

The women are participating in a long tradition of creating holiday toys for the needy from inside Los Angeles County jails. Started by Sheriff Eugene W. Biscailuz in the 1940s, it has become, deputies say, a “pet project” of current Sheriff Lee Baca.

Male inmates working in the program in a smaller branch at the Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic make about 700 wood toys.

Part of the sheriff’s ceremonial duties since Biscailuz is an annual trip to deliver dolls to the Belvedere Children’s Center in East Los Angeles. This year, Baca entered the center to children singing “Sheriff Baca is coming to town.”

The dolls that go with Baca are about a foot tall, stuffed with cotton and moon-faced. Inmates stitch eyes, noses and smiling mouths by hand, usually trying to match eye color with the yarn hair. The dresses are almost all different, coming from scraps of donated material and sometimes from the same blue cloth used for the inmates’ own uniforms.

Everage interviews interested inmates one-by-one before accepting them into the sewing group. A grandmotherly guard who often listens to inmates with her hands folded, Everage said she mostly considers the inmate’s demeanor and behavior.

With another 50 inmates on the waiting list to get into the program, she said the women she selects are the most meticulous and eager.

“I don’t have time to force them to do it,” she said.

No special benefits come to the women who participate in the sewing, other than something to do and “maybe some extra cookies during lunch,” she said.

Everage has overseen the doll-making at the downtown Los Angeles jail since 1984, and said the program helps to improve inmates’ behavior inside the jail and to prepare them for work once they are out.

“We’re teaching them a trade,” she said. “Maybe they won’t get a job sewing, but it still gives them job readiness, good work habits.”

Everage said she knows the program sometimes pays off, because “after inmates from the program are released, I sometimes see them working at the mall.” Others let her know of their progress through dozens of Christmas cards she receives every year.

Inmate Jacqueline McFarlin, 57, said the program has changed her outlook on jail time.

Incarcerated for four months because of a petty theft conviction, McFarlin said sewing has focused her thoughts on what she will do when she gets out.

“I love to sew,” she said with tears coming. “It keeps your mind occupied, focused on something positive. I would like to do some of this at home.”

The workdays vary, the sewing circle meeting mainly when Everage is on duty. The women often can’t wait to get started.

“We’re supposed to be here at 8,” she said. “But really, we’re rushing up to be here at 6:30 most days. When it’s time to go, we want to stay.”

Everage’s budget comes from the Inmate Welfare Fund, an account of money raised mostly through pay phones inside the jail.

Lt. Bob Hudson, who oversees the money, said the toy program receives “no more than $5,000” raised through the jail to supplement donations for supplies and sewing equipment.

In addition to work skills, the doll-making gives some inmates a connection with the outside world that they wouldn’t otherwise have.

Priscilla Sandoval, 26, was convicted of burglary and is serving a year. In order to serve her sentence, she had to leave her four small children behind, though she preferred not to share details.

To take her mind off her troubles, she applied to the sewing program and “started working right away,” she said. She had seen her grandmother sew but, like most women in the program, had never even threaded a needle.

A fast learner, Sandoval has done most of the jobs involved in producing the dolls in her five months working on them. She started embroidering eyes and moved on to sewing dresses and body parts.

She had told her three daughters they could pick up the toys at a sheriff’s station and recently learned that the girls are now owners of dolls produced by the Twin Towers Sewing Circle. And maybe, just maybe, they were stitched by their own mother.

To donate cloth, yarn, wood and other material, Deputy Myrtle Everage may be contacted at (213) 893-5220.