The World's Fair Quilt: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel

As Sylvia Bergstrom Compson contends with financial setbacks at Elm Creek Quilt Camp, her friend and colleague Summer Sullivan, curator of the Waterford Historical Society’s quilt gallery, asks a special favor. When Sylvia and her elder sister were teenagers, they entered a quilt in the Sears National Quilt Contest for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition. The unprecedented competition offered its 25,000 participants the opportunity for artistic expression, the thrill of competition, a tantalizing grand prize, and fame, with the finalists’ quilts prominently displayed at the Chicago World’s Fair. If Sylvia lent the Bergstrom sisters’ World’s Fair Quilt to Summer’s exhibit, it would illuminate a forgotten chapter of women’s history during the difficult years of the Great Depression.

Sylvia grants Summer’s request, but with misgivings. Neglected in the attic for decades, the fragile antique requires careful cleaning and repair—and not all of the memories it evokes are pleasant. Threads of fierce rivalry were woven into the fabric of the sisters’ relationship. Yet as their masterpiece took shape, the reluctant partners discovered in each other an artistic kindred spirit, and perhaps even a friend—until a troubling secret threatened to shatter their newfound sisterhood.