Perhaps the most widely disseminated pattern celebrating the New Deal was the Roosevelt Rose quilt pattern designed by Ruth Finley. First published in 1933 in Good Housekeeping, colonial revivalist Finley created this pattern with no overtly political message. Although the design has no symbolic connection to President Roosevelt or New Deal governmental policies, it provided an opportunity for a simultaneously cheery and patriotic expression of support for the new administration, which swept into the White House in 1932. Finley wrote that it was in line with a “peculiar and paramount tradition—the creation and naming of new designs in honor of events political, economic, and social.”

Title: 
The Roosevelt Rose—A new Historical Quilt Pattern
Maker: 
Ruth Finley
Good Housekeeping, January 1934