"Highlighting an essential but insufficiently recognized contribution by women to this country’s space program, Matich celebrates the fabric workers who, as "Aerospace Composite Technicians (Soft-Goods)," manufactured by hand the 1,400 thermal blankets placed beneath the ceramic-hull tiles of all the space shuttles. Focusing particularly on the early life and NASA career of Jean Wright, a largely self-taught seamstress who was the last of the "Sew Sisters" to be hired, the author describes how the special materials were made, tested, and applied on the way to a tense, climactic story of how some of the quilting on the shuttle Atlantis once had to be repaired on the fly. Painted illustrations alternate views of grand shuttles and scenes of intent- looking women bent over their stitchery, then give way to photos of the latter and samples of their products in an afterword. "Stitches are small," the author writes, "and so was their part / in the shuttles’ amazing voyages, / but very small things / can lift mighty wings / on the heels of the highest adventures."
— Booklist
