Quilt shop owner Dewey Pellicano intends to mix business with pleasure at the Sewing-by-the-Sea Symposium in Asilomar, California. But her plan is ruined by Mercedes Madsen, the militant conference organizer who acts more like a dictator than a director.

Now tangled up in a bundle of trouble, Dewey is facing a notorious "ghost," a mysterious missing woman, a stolen heirloom sewing box, and a mountain lion on the loose. . . and that's before she stumbles across the dead body. Armed only with blueprint fabric and her wits, Dewey must try to find a pattern in this crazy quilt of a murder mystery.