Title: Boy's Quilt
Artist(s): Emilie Ann Clarke
Dimensions: 72" x 84"
Date Made: 1924-35
Place Created: Detroit, Michigan
Collection: Great Lakes Quilt Center/Michigan State University Museum, #6119.12,
Clarke Family Quilt Collection
Photo Credit: Fumio Ichikawa

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 hand-made templates and patterns, unique hand-colored graphs of planned quilts, newspaper and magazine clippings, and personal inventory notes written by the quilters. Because the Clarke quilt collection represents virtually the entire output of quilts made by one family over a 20-year period and the supplemental materials reflect the entire quiltmaking process from inception to completion, it offers a unique glimpse into the quilting lives of one family. The collection also provides an excellent study example for understanding quilting activity in Detroit during this period and the relationship of the Clarke family quilters to the regional and national rejuvenation of interest in quiltmaking and home arts of the 1920s to the 1940s.

For a pair of children's quilts, Emilie Clarke pieced together squares featuring outline embroidered pictorial images. This quilt, known by the family as the "Boy's Quilt," features designs rendered mostly in blue embroidery floss. After World War I, colorfast cotton embroidery threads became available in a variety of colors. As other dye colors became more stable, outline in other colors became increasingly popular. Post-1910, bluework, or all blue embroidery designs, became more common. Emilie completed a companion quilt, known as "Girl's Quilt" whose designs include florals, "kewpies," and sunbonnet figures.