Quilt As Desired
First in the Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery series

by Arlene Sachitano

Quilt As Desired is Arlene Sachitano's second full length mystery. Her first, Chip and Die, was set in the high-tech industry where she has been a tech writer. Her love of quilting, though, took root in a serial novella for Storyquilts' Block of the Month kit called Seams Like Murder. Each month quilters receive a pattern for a block designed by Susan Morse and Susan Bucharest, fabric, instructions, and a chapter of the story. By quilting each block, the sewer / reader gets clues for solving the mystery.

Sachitano decided to take the quiting mystery a step further and wrote Quilt As Desired, the first in the Harriet Truman / Loose Threads Mystery series. Harriet Truman reluctantly returns to the small Washington state town where she grew up to take over her aunt's long arm machine quilting business. No sooner has she started taking on customers then her business is broken into twice, a show quilt is destroyed, and her aunt's best friend is found murdered. Soon the members of her aunt's quilting group, the Loose Threads, come to her rescue in more ways than one. Harriet not only realizes that she belongs where she is, doing what she enjoys, but that she may have found love once again.

Quilt As Desired is a fun, cozy mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed the town characters and Harriet's reluctant romances. I also learned about quilt competitions and some of the nuances of the art and the patterns. Though Sachitano's quilt explanations were necessary to move the story along and to flesh out knowledge for the novice, I did find that sometimes they intruded into the narrative. I suspect that many of Sachitano's readers are quilters. They either would know some of this information already and would feel that the explanation was unnecessary, or they would love every little historical nuance about the art of quilting.

Still, I would love to read the further adventures of Harriet Truman. What's next, Ms. Sachitano?