10/11/2026
We were absolutely thrilled to have Jean Wright as our guest speaker at the 2026 Florida Sews Together Retreat. Her presentation was out of this world! Jean's story has been written for children as "Sew Sisters".
The book tells the true story of Jean Wright, one of eighteen women known as the "Sew Sisters" or "ladies in the back shop" who worked in the Thermal Protection Systems Facility (TPSF) for NASA. Published by https://www.tilburyhouse.com/product-page/sew-sister.
Instead of metal or glass, the white outer layers of NASA space shuttles relied on specialized, two-inch-thick thermal insulation quilts. Wright and her team crafted and repaired these protective fabric blankets mostly by hand with extreme precision.
The book highlights how traditional domestic trades and hand-sewing skills intersect with high-tech aeronautics, proving that space exploration achievement does not strictly require a traditional college degree or a background in math.
Inspired by watching the moon landing at age thirteen, Wright pursued her love of sewing and eventually joined the space program at age 49 as the last seamstress hired for the shuttle fleet. Her team worked on hardware for shuttles like Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour, as well as parachutes and blankets for the Orion spacecraft.
From the publisher’s website: ”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."
