I went home to California to visit my family some time back, and two days before I arrived, I got an email from my mom. She asked if I would mind sleeping in my brother’s bedroom while I was there.
I reluctantly agreed (my brother’s room has always smelled weird), and my mom confessed that I couldn’t stay in my childhood bedroom because it was filled to the brim with her quilting supplies. She promised to have it cleaned out by Christmas.
Now, I’m glad my mom has a hobby. She’s very good at quilting, and the quilt she made for me when I got married is one of my most treasured possessions. But I never totally got quilting. I didn’t really understand the point.
Why would you go to a fabric store, buy a perfectly good piece of fabric, cut it up, and then sew it back together again? Why not just make a blanket out of the actual fabric?
But then I started working on a fiction series from Guideposts Books, and I started to get it. The series is called Patchwork Mysteries, and it’s about Sarah Hart, a vintage quilt restorer who stumbles into all kinds of puzzling mysteries.
Not every mystery is about a quilt per se, but quilts play a huge role in the series, and as I started to do research for the books, I discovered shelves and shelves of books about quilting history and construction and design.
I learned about the different kinds of patterns and fabrics and how women throughout the centuries have created them out of leftover scraps, creating beauty out of necessity.
I learned about the Victorians and the Underground Railroad and World War Two and the Civil Rights Movement, all through the quilts that people have left behind. I discovered that every quilt tells a story—about the time and place it was made, and about the woman or women who crafted it.
After a year of hard work on this series, I am completely drawn into this world. Not the actual sewing part. I’m no good at that. I am still completely in awe of the skill that it takes to piece an intricate quilt together because I know I could never do it myself.
But it also takes artistry to craft a page-turning mystery, and I couldn’t be prouder of the books our authors have created .
This isn’t a series for quilters; it’s a series for anyone who loves good stories, strong characters, and reminders that God is in control of all the mysteries in our lives. I am so excited about the launch of this series, and I hope you fall in love with it just like I have.
