Manslaughter by Alice Duer Miller

In the spring Lydia was transferred from the kitchen to the long, bright workroom. Here the women prisoners hemmed the blankets woven in the men's prison. Here they themselves wove the rag rugs for the floors, made up the house linen and their own clothes -- Joseph's too -- not only their prison clothes, but the complete outfit with which each prisoner was dismissed.

Lydia was incredibly awkward with the needle. It surprised the tall, thin assistant in charge of the workroom that anyone who had had what she described as advantages could be so grossly ignorant of the art of sewing. Lydia hardly knew on which finger to put her thimble and tied a knot in her thread like a man tying a rope. But it was her very inability that first woke her interest, her will. She did not like to be stupider than anyone else. Suddenly one day her little jaw set and she decided to learn how to sew. From that moment she began to adjust herself to prison life.