The Master Quilter

February 16, 2004
Even a newcomer to the popular Elm Creek Quilts series will quickly get caught up in the lives of the ladies who stitch. Sylvia Compson, the doyenne of the quilters who teach their art at the Elm Creek Quilt Camp, has married Andrew Cooper—an occasion of joy, with one hitch. The surprise Christmas Eve wedding meant Sylvia's friends didn't have time to craft the requisite bridal quilt. Will 140 six-inch blocks arrive by April 1? Sarah McClure is betting they will, but her husband, Matt, bets two weeks of breakfast in bed that Sarah can't keep a secret for three months. Not all the tension in the book is quite so mellow, though. Summer Sullivan has to decide how to define being her own woman. Does it mean staying in Waterford with the quilters or following her love, Jeremy, when he finishes graduate school? And Bonnie Markham has big woes: her fabric shop, Grandma's Attic, is running in the red, and her husband, Craig, has been conniving with evil realtor Greg Krolich to push her over the edge. This is the modern world, with cell phones and cybersex, but Chiaverini's quilting women are also a world apart. They feel one another's joys and griefs acutely; their lives are stitched together. The author's style is clean, and almost YA simple, and her dialogue is uninspired. Yet she intensifies the story's texture by retelling key scenes from multiple points of view, and along the way she enriches the reader's awareness of quilting's importance as a female art form and a source of deep common bonds. Agent, Mary Massie.

February 1, 2004
The members of the Elm Creek Quilters set out to commemorate their matriarch Sylvia's recent wedding and her years of devotion to quilting and Elm Creek Manor with a bridal quilt. Sylvia's friends and students agree to contribute blocks that express how Sylvia has inspired them. But the project hits snags when the local quilters are confronted with their own personal problems, including a troubled marriage, a potential business failure, a budding romance, and new career prospects. Long-buried secrets, animosities, and yearnings rise to the surface as the women struggle to meet their quilting deadline and maintain the close circle of friendship that has sustained them. This latest novel in the Elm Creek Quilt series brings to the forefront the supporting characters who have made it such a popular series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2003
In this sixth edition of the "Elm Creek Quilt" series, the upcoming wedding of "master quilter" Sylvia Compson does not exactly have everyone in stitches. With a ten-city author tour.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.