arkansastraveler (32 page)

T
HERE ACTUALLY WAS
a quilt competition sponsored by Sears, Roebuck and Company during the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. The theme for the fair and the contest was “A Century of Progress,” since Chicago was also celebrating its one hundredth birthday. The contest remains to this day the largest quilt competition ever held. Almost 25,000 women entered quilts, hoping to win the twelve-hundred dollar prize and bonus, a cash amount that was greater than the 1933 annual income of an average family.

The winning quilt was initially called “Unknown Star” and later “Star of the Bluegrass.” It was entered by Margaret Rogers Caden of Lexington, Kentucky. The quilt was presented after the fair to Eleanor Roosevelt, and no records of the quilt exist after 1934. Because laws concerning presidential gifts had not yet been passed, Mrs. Roosevelt was free to give it away, something she was known to do with White House gifts. Its whereabouts remains one of the unsolved mysteries of the quilt world.

Grateful acknowledgement is given to the book
Patchwork Souvenirs of the 1933 World’s Fair,
written by
Merikay Waldvogel and Barbara Brackman. If you would like to read more about the winning quilts and the stories behind them, I highly recommend this excellent and fascinating work.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Earlene Fowler, her appearances, San Celina, quilts, and future Benni Harper adventures, please visit her Web site:

http://www.earlenefowler.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com