Flower Garden
Bozena Vilhemina Clarke
Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan
Appliquéd 1933, quilted 1934
68 1/4" x 93 1/2"
Cotton
MSU Museum Accession 6119.27
Photos by Fumio Ichikawa, all rights reserved by the MSU Museum

Eveline Foland, who was a designer for the Kansas City Star newspaper, created the pattern used for this quilt. When the patterns appeared one at a time in the Star, they were part of a twenty part series known as “Memory Bouquet.” The pattern was sold to the Detroit News, where, renamed “Flower Garden Quilt,” it appeared during 1931-1932. Foland’s work apparently appeared only in these two newspapers.

Bozena Clarke appliquéd the quilt in 1933 and then quilted it the following year as a gift for her daughter, Laura May Clarke. Clarke’s “Flower Garden” was entered in the 1937 Detroit News Quilt Show.

The Clarke Family Quilt Collection, given to Michigan State University Museum in 1986 by Dr. Harriet A. Clarke and her brother, George M. Clarke, includes forty-five quilts and quilt tops completed between 1926 and 1946 by Bozena Vilhemina Clarke, her daughter Laura May Clarke, and daughter-in-law Emilie Ann Clarke. The collection also includes numerous handmade templates and patterns, unique hand-colored graphs of planned quilts, newspaper and magazine clippings, and personal inventory notes written by the quilters.

By Mary Worrall, excerpted from American Quilts from Michigan State University Museum.