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Historic Museum Pattern Is Copied by Quilter

June 16, 1939
Michigan State University Museum; Detroit News Quilt History Project
Detroit, Michigan, United States
A newspaper clipping from the Detroit News collected by a member of the Clarke family. Titled, Historic Museum Pattern Is Copied by Quilter." Published Friday, June 16, 1939. The article mentions Mrs. Voelker.
Friday, June 16, 1939.
Historic Museum Pattern Is Copied by Quilter
by Edith B. Crumb

The favorite pasttime of Mrs. Charles Voelker, 12055 Hartwell avenue, is making quilts from difficult patterns.

Her latest achievement in this line, a Tree of Life quilt, is shown in the picture.

Mrs. Voelker first got the idea from a newspaper clipping showing a seventeenth century woven bedcover which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Mrs. Jane Howie, Walled Lake, took the clipping and enlarged it to a size suitable for a large quilt. Mrs. Howie likes to figure out difficult patterns as well as Mrs. Voelker likes to make them into a quilt, so they are a good team.

It took Mrs. Voelker 11 months to complete the quilt. A study of the design will give you some idea of how much planning had to be done for the color scheme.

MANY COLORS
The trunk is brown, the grass medium green and the small plants several shades and tints of green. The flowers in the centers of the border are varied shades and tints of violet. Almost every other color imaginable has been included in the tree.

The background of this quilt is white and binding green. The field of the center panel is quilted in a diamond lattice, outside of which is a narrow conventional flower, quilted. The border is in a chevron striped quilting.

Mrs. Voelker has put the name of the pattern and the name of her grandson, Charles Joseph Voelker, who is to inherit the quilt, in white quilting.

Mrs. H. Ewald, 6357 Perkins street, Detroit, would like to know if someone would lend her the pattern for the Scotch Dog quilt. She has a big Farmer Boy quilt pattern which she would be glad to send any one who sends her the dog pattern.

Courtesy of The Detroit News Archives.
Applique; Quilting

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