Paperback – 145 x 145 mm – 240 pages

Hardback – 228 x 225 mm – 244 pages

150 full-colour photographs

Paperback ISBN 9781843681465

Watch an interview with Tracy Chevalier about Fine Cell Work and the Sleep Quilt

The Sleep Quilt is unlike any other quilt you will have seen. Commissioned by Tracy Chevalier, it is entirely stitched and quilted by prisoners in some of Britain’s toughest prisons. Each of the 63 squares explores what sleep means in prison. A moment of escape for some, for others a dark return to all they most regret in life, sleep has a great significance in jail that is only strengthened by the difficulty of finding it in the relentlessly noisy, hot and cramped environment.

By turns poignant, witty, light-hearted and tragic, The Sleep Quilt shines a light on lives that few outside can guess at. An essay by Tracy Chevalier and an introduction by Katy Emck of Fine Cell Work, the charity that made the quilt possible, as well as many quotations from prisoners, frame this remarkable work.

It is also available in a limited edition larger-format hardcover, with a cloth cover and luxurious production value, signed by Tracy Chevalier.

All royalties from the sales of the books will go to Fine Cell Work.

Tracy Chevalier is an American British novelist, best known for Girl with a Pearl Earring. Her interest in quilting was sparked by her research for a novel, The Last Runaway, and she is now a committed quilter.  Fine Cell Work is a charity and social enterprise that runs rehabilitation projects in thirty British prisons by training prisoners in paid, skilled, creative needlework, undertaken in the long hours spent in their cells, to foster hope, discipline and self-belief.