Maybelle in Stitches by Joyce Magnin Litfuse Blog Tour

About the book: Maybelle Kazinzki can't sew. She was after all, the only girl in the seventh grade Home Economics class to sew the zipper in the neck hole of the A-Line dress they were supposed to make. But when she finds an unfinished quilt in the attic of her mother's house she gets the crazy idea to finish it---somehow, come heck or high water. She thinks it will help fill the lonely nights while her husband, Holden, is serving overseas during World War II.

Her recently departed mother's quilt is made from scraps of material Maybelle traces back to her mother's childhood, her grandmother's childhood and her own childhood. She tries to add one of Holden's stripes to it but the sewing is not going well and neither is her life. After receiving some harsh news, Maybelle's faith falters and she puts the quilt away and stops trusting God. But God is faithful---no matter what. And it'll take a group of neighborhood women armed with quilting needles to help Maybelle believe that.

Learn more about this book and the series at the Quilts of Love website.


About the Author: Joyce Magnin is the author of the Bright's Pond novels, including the award-winning The Prayers of Agnes Sparrow. A member of the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Fellowship, Joyce is a frequent workshop leader and the organizer of the StoryCrafters fiction group. She lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Learn more about Joyce at: http://joycemagnin.blogspot.com

About Quilts of Love: Quilts tell stories of love and loss, hope and faith, tradition and new beginnings. The Quilts of Love series focuses on the women who quilted all of these things into their family histories. A new book releases each month and features contemporary and historical romances as well as women's fiction and the occasional light mystery. You will be drawn into the endearing characters of this series and be touched by their stories.

Landing page: 

http://litfusegroup.com/author/JMagnin

 

 

 

My thoughts:  I love how this book brought the time around WWII and what was going on for those who stayed behind.  The rationing, women in factories, blackout curtains and V Mail.  I never really considered what they did with the remains of the soldiers killed overseas, how many of them were buried far from home and the families had no body to honor at a funeral.  We are so used to knowing about news instantly and being able to reach those even far away with the push of a few buttons, but imagining what it was like to wait for short letters or dreaded telegrams to find out what was going on days or weeks after it had already happened is so far from our regular way of life.

Maybelle feels that she is inept at household matters and misses her late mother.  She doesn't know how to sew, after a disastrous school assignment, and isn't so sure about cooking or cleaning either!  It takes her friends and an unfinished quilt of her mother's to show her how much friends, faith and taking a chance can change matters for her.

To work through missing her husband, Holden, who is missing in action and the husband's of her friends, they decide to finish a "crazy quilt" that has bits of fabric from things that are meaningful to each of the women.  Scraps from wedding dresses, baby clothes, war banners, and husband's shirts are all sewn together to demonstrate their hope in the safe return of the men and their faith that God is making it all work together for a reason.