Quilt, Crazy pattern

The word "crazy" used to describe this type of quilt may refer to the cracked or "crazed" appearance of the blocks or to the possibility that a woman might go crazy piecing so many small bits of fabric together! By the mid-1880s, Crazy quilts were so popular that enterprising manufacturers offered them in ready-to-sew kits. The prospective quiltmaker could order complete kits in which there were precut pieces of silk that could be formed into blocks according to instructions explaining how to fit them together properly. Sometimes, the backing fabric was marked like the base of a jigsaw puzzle, showing where to place each piece of silk. Often the silk pieces themselves were stamped with a pattern, such as the outline of a flower, over which one embroidered. If quilt makers wanted to use their own silk and velvet scraps, they could still order appliqués, commonly machine embroidered, or at least sheets of perforated-paper patterns to use in tracing designs onto the patches. There were also iron-on transfer designs and even specially printed sheets of paper with oil-painted pictures that could be transferred onto fabric by pressing the paper backing with a hot iron. This explains the strangely uniform quality of many Crazy quilts, with their ubiquitous Japanese fans and Kate Greenaway figures. It also makes those Crazy quilts that are not as formulaic seem all the more extraordinary.

This quilt (1993.101) was a mother-daughter project. One of the donors, Dr. Grace V. Gorham (1902-1998), believed it to have been made by her mother, Ellie Keeler Gorham (1873-1965), and her grandmother Elizabeth Hickok Keeler (1847-1926). Among other charming fabrics, it includes an engraved patch of silk showing a fairy behind a wreath of flowers, on which is printed "343-Copyright by Robinson Engraving Co., Boston, 1883". Because it is one of the type of commercially available pieces made expressly for inclusion in Crazy quilts, it helps to date this one. This quilt, made when Ellie was about twelve, was probably an enjoyable project to work on with her mother—filled with brightly colored silks and many fancy embroidered patches, it must have been much more engaging for a young girl learning to sew than a regular cotton pieced quilt. Even its backing fabric is delightful—it is an extraordinary yellow-green printed silk with a repeating pattern showing rust-red crackles emanating from gray floral centers.