Novels About Quilting, Knitting, and Crocheting

Book Summary

In 1803, when middle daughter Sarah was eleven, she received a gift that is hard to comprehend today. Hetty ‘Handful’ Grimké was taken from the slave quarters she shared with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah.

While Sarah knows her next move will create trouble, she also knows she cannot accept this gift. In alternating voices between Hetty and Sarah, we see the next thirty-five years of their lives and painfully experience the realities of slavery and how it contrasts with the lives of plantation owners and their children.

Forbidden to read or write, Handful’s mother, Charlotte, uses quilting as a means to document her experiences as a slave, to preserve her African heritage, and to pass on her personal history to Handful. The quilt becomes a powerful narrative of her life, capturing joy, suffering, and hope through images and symbols.

Book Summary

The Persian Pickle Club brings you into the lives of gossipy quilters in a Kansas farming town. While crops are suffering from the ongoing drought and the job market is just as dry, a young farmer’s wife finds her weekly respite in the quilting club. 

But when a new club member stirs up a big secret, the women must unite in a new way to protect each other.

Book Summary

The new community center in town is met with mixed reactions. Some are thrilled to have a new space for locals to gather and create, but others see it as a waste of taxpayer money. The new director, Darleen, is just as controversial. Lucy Stone isn’t convinced Darleen is as warm-hearted or as qualified as she seems.

When Darleen and a young employee vanish, and dismembered remains appear, Lucy begins to examine the clues. In order to solve the murder, Lucy will have to piece together the clues that involve a trusted friend’s emotional new sewing project and the authenticity of a mysterious 300-year-old patchwork quilt.

Book Summary

During the Civil War, a young Black woman named Stella embroidered maps onto cloth in her small Creole cottage in New Orleans. The maps helped enslaved men flee to the North and join the Union Army. Her activities were risky because she was bound to a man who would kill her if he discovered her maps. To complicate matters further, her true love is William, a Black soldier and a brilliant musician.

In New York City, a Jewish woman named Lily attends abolitionist meetings, rolls bandages, and crafts quilts. She’s working on a quilt for her husband, who is stationed in Louisiana with the Union Army. When months go by without hearing from him, she decides to make the perilous journey South to find him.

Book Summary

In 1941, after France fell to Nazi occupation, a 12-year-old girl named Josie fled to Casablanca, Morocco, with her family while awaiting safe passage to the US. The sights, sounds, and smells of Casablanca are completely different from everything Josie has ever known, but she loves it.

Seventy years later, Zoe arrives in Morocco to start an expat life with her husband and baby daughter. As she struggles with her new life abroad, she joins a quilting club and discovers a new passion that takes her on an unexpected path.

The two timelines converge when Zoe discovers a wooden box and Josie’s diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her daughter’s bedroom. As Zoe reads about the Casablanca of the past through Josie’s diary, it changes both her perspective and her attitude.

Book Summary

After losing his mother when he was just 4 years old, Clay was raised by extended family, including his Aunt Easter and his Uncle Paul. As Clay grows, he is desperate to piece together the memories of his mother. Paul, a quilter, teaches him that he can create something new and beautiful by stitching together parts and pieces.

This novel paints a vivid portrait of a rural mining town in the mountains of Kentucky over the past century. In Appalachian culture, quilts serve as a family photo album. As Clay grows from a boy to a man struggling to find his way, Paul makes a quilt for Clay that helps him to reconcile his past so that he can move toward a better future.

Book Summary

At fifty-five, Claire is making a big move from Missouri to Door County, Wisconsin, to escape a bad relationship. Once arriving, she quickly joins the local quilting club and finds inspiration in the beauty of her new home. As she becomes more comfortable in the region, she finds herself open to new friendships, and maybe even the man in the red scarf.

Unfortunately, the town is experiencing a series of break-ins targeting local businesses. Claire and her quilting group are soon trying to solve the mystery in order to protect the shops.

Book Summary

Frank Money is an angry and self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who returns to a racist America with more than just the physical scars of the front lines. He barely recognizes his home or himself, but when he hears that his younger sister, Cee, is in danger, his life has a new purpose.

Together, they return to their rural Georgia hometown, where Cee learns to quilt while recovering from a near-fatal accident. And after spending years trying to escape, Frank learns what it means to come home.

Book Summary

Esme feels like she’s failing. Fired from her NYC publishing job, divorced, and with piles of unfinished manuscripts in her broken-down car, she returns home to Asheville, North Carolina.

Before she died, her late grandmother, Adele, had begged Esme to come home. Now that she’s back, she discovers that the family’s once-charming lakeside retreat is quickly falling into financial ruin. Determined to help her grandfather save it, with help from her estranged mother and a travelling chef.

While cleaning out the attic, Esme discovers a trove of museum-worthy quilts and begins to learn about a chapter of her grandmother’s life she knew nothing about.

This story is told from the point of view of both grandmother and granddaughter, alternating between the past and present timelines.

Book Summary

Amateur sleuth Molly Pink and her crochet group, the Tarzana Hookers, are on the road to Pixie for a relaxing crochet weekend. It’s the perfect time for Molly to visit because her old beau needs help identifying a thief. Molly heads to a pre-wedding party hoping to catch the culprit in the act. Instead, the case escalates when the groom is murdered.

The victim is found right next door to the Hooker’s vacation spot, so they are quickly pulled into the investigation. Can Molly find the murderer before she becomes the next victim?

Book Summary

Welcome to A Good Yarn, a new shop on Blossom Street in Seattle, where knitters go for yarn, patterns, and lasting friendships. In the first novel in the Blossom Street series, we are introduced to Lydia, the owner of the shop, and her three students, who all come from very different walks of life.

Lydia is a cancer survivor who initially took up knitting to help her through her treatments. As the women get to know one another while knitting baby blankets, they learn that each of them has difficult things going on in their lives.

Book Summary

Jo’s life is turned upside down when her husband is killed in a car accident shortly after announcing that he wants a divorce. Seeking a fresh start, she decides to leave London and move back to her seaside hometown.

She and her two sons move into a dilapidated villa and take over her beloved grandmother’s knitting shop, which is also desperately in need of a facelift.

As Jo begins to find her way as a single parent, she takes comfort in the local “Stitch and Bitch” group, which brings together an eclectic group of women who share their stories and trade gossip. And they have even more to gossip about when a new man enters Jo’s life and an A-list actress moves into the local mansion.

Book Summary

While she’s between jobs, Charlotte begins teaching crafting at the local nursing home. Seeing how much the residents enjoy it, she begins to envision turning her crafting hobby into a career that she loves. She begins by creating a crafting hub for the community that she calls ‘The Crafternoon Sewcial Club’.

When a local charity sponsors a knitting-themed fundraiser, Charlotte is determined to win and sees it as the perfect opportunity to attract new members. But she soon learns that not everyone wants her club to succeed – in fact, some are eager to see her fail.

Book Summary

Meg is a divorced mom who works part-time at the local yarn store. Previously, the biggest mystery she solved was finding her missing knitting needle that was tucked behind her ear after spending all morning searching for it.

But now, someone is trying to pin a murder on her. No one in town wants to talk to the cop investigating the case, so it’s up to Meg to clear her own name.

Book Summary

Mary is lost in grief after the sudden loss of her only child, five-year-old Stella. She’s shut out her husband, has a distant relationship with her mom, and feels like she’s drowning in sorrow alone.

Her mother has been nagging her to get out and convinces her to try Big Alice’s Sit And Knit in Providence, Rhode Island. As she knits, she learns about the other attendees, who are each trying to overcome their own dark seasons of life. From terminal illness and a past sexual assault to those trying to heal from losing loved ones on 9/11, the knitters share their past. And as she bonds with them, Mary begins to process her own grief.

Book Summary

You may know Sutton Foster from her Tony-award-winning Broadway performances or as the age-defying book editor on TV Land/Hulu television series Younger. What you likely don’t know is her love of crafting. In fact, she credits crafting with saving her life time and again. 

In her memoir, she shares stories from her early days of performing up through the experience of becoming a mother through adoption. Along the way, you’ll hear about bullying chorus girls, family drama, the thrill of Broadway, a painful divorce made more so by the tabloids, her breakout TV role, and her struggles with infertility. But through all of it, the constant in Sutton’s life was her passion for cross-stitching and crocheting. This book even includes crochet patterns, recipes, and more!

Book Summary

The seven books of the Knitting in the City series follow seven friends who are all members of the same knitting group.

In the first book, Neanderthal Seeks Human, we meet Janie. She’s just lost her boyfriend, her apartment, and her job all in the same day. The only thing that could make it worse is that it was all witnessed by Quinn Sullivan (aka Sir McHotpants).

Janie is incapable of engaging in conversation without sharing TMI, especially when she’s unnerved. And no one unnerves her more than Quinn. So the very last thing she needs is for him to make her an offer that she can’t refuse.

Book Summary

London dating columnist Cleo hadn’t planned to spend her 30th birthday alone, but her boss insisted that she take a brief sabbatical to re-energize herself and bring something fresh to her column. She’s booked a luxury cabin on a remote Irish island.

Mac is also looking forward to some alone time. He doesn’t want to admit his marriage is failing, so he leaves Boston behind with the plan to soul-search on the same Irish island.

Due to a mix-up with the bookings, it turns out that both Cleo and Mac have booked the same cabin. The two are instantly at odds, but since the ferry only comes weekly, they are stuck with one another until then.

To pass the time, Cleo joins the women’s knitting club at the local pub. Filled with sassy and smart women, in just a short time, the knitting group teaches Cleo valuable lessons about what friendship should look like.

As the week goes on, Cleo and Mac find that they don’t mind each other’s company as much as they thought. But it’s complicated…

Book Summary

Clara Parkes left her career in the high-tech industry to pursue her love of knitting, and it wound up taking her all around the world. In this witty travel memoir, she documents 17 of her most memorable adventures spanning 15 years of a life well-crafted.

From the fjords of Iceland to a cozy yarn shop in Paris, and from Taos, New Mexico, to Edinburgh, Scotland, Clara’s essays are part travel narrative and part cultural history.