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Crazy Quilt
Crazy Quilts became extremely popular in the 1870’s and 1880’s as the Japanese fad, brought in part by the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, gained popularity and influenced the Aesthetic Movement. Crazy Quilting was also fed by a new availability of domestic silks. The quilts were also a way of saving bits of fabric from important occasions, much like earlier album quilts.
This quilt is made like most crazy quilts at the time. It is composed of 16 blocks, each of which is made by basting a center piece onto a backing and then working outward, attaching pieces of fabric until the backing, which is the size of block desired, is filled. The blocks are then pieced together and the whole quilt is embroidered and quilted. The quilt gives the illusion of an allover and fluid pattern despite being segmented into individual blocks. The quilt is heavily embroidered with a variety of stitches, as well as with flowers, animals and birds. The result is a complex and beautiful quilt. |