Traditionally, a quilt is defined as being made-up of three or more layers of fabric, sewn together to create a functional everyday garment or blanket durable enough to last for years of use. But a crazy quilt is not that kind of quilt. Often made with more luxurious and fragile materials, crazy quilts were commonly used as decorative wall tapestries, created to beautify everyday homes with pieces of affordable art. They were characterized most often by haphazardly cut fabric pieces in a variety of colors, though the most common colors during the craze were the dark jewel tones (popularized by Queen Victoria in the final years of her reign). The textiles themselves ranged widely from cottons to silk to any spare scrap of cloth or ribbon and were thoughtfully fitted together and sewn in place with a range of elaborate, intricate embroidery stitching.

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The Crazy Quilt craze is believed to have begun in about 1876, when the Centennial Exposition was held in Philadelphia. That exposition specifically helped to introduce the United States to Japonisme, a new art movement that had been blooming all throughout Europe based on Japanese and Oriental art styles. Afterwards, there was a big boom in the United States in the use of asymmetrical patterns in art and quilting, as well as key motifs like folding fans. This coincided perfectly with the Industrial Revolution, which allowed not only for the mass production printed cotton cloth but silks as well, putting both these materials into the hands of the everyday common people. Taking all of these elements as inspiration, the everyday women of the time started to make quilts out of any odd pieces of cloth, silk scraps, and ribbons that they could find; mixing and matching them into this bizarre, eclectic looking jigsaw puzzle of colors and decoration. The trend was so popular that even commercial businesses joined in: book publishers, magazines, and even cigar sellers began to include scraps of silk and fabric with their products.

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Because of the folk-craft nature of creating quilts, there is no one procedure for how to make a crazy quilt (or any quilt really). The process of making a crazy quilt can be entirely different, depending on who teaches you. Sometimes the quilt begins with a base layer, like a single, thin sheet, that each individual piece is carefully sewn down on both sides. Sometimes the pieces will be sewn together into a design, and then carefully attached to a base layer. Sometimes the base layer won’t be used at all, and the quilter will simply sew together a few pieces and work from there.

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Regardless, there are a few common tools used in every crazy quilt, as well as a few key rules. For this paper I'm going to describe the method I would use for creating a crazy quilt out of one-foot squares on a base layer.

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First, you will need to have enough cloth pieces to complete whatever sized quilt you plan to make. (Eyeball the number of scraps you think you’ll need per square, then have more). The base layer can be anything from a spare bed sheet to an old tote bag, as long as there’s enough fabric for more than just the squares themselves. You’d also need a sewing needle and some basic thread, some scissors, embroidery floss in as many colors as you wish, a pencil, and a quilters ruler (or a stencil for a square foot that you can trace).

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Next, you’ll want to cut out some vague base layer rectangles, big enough that when all the cloth pieces are laid down you can trace the square over it later. Continue until you have enough rectangles for the squares you want, then take one and start pulling cloth pieces to arrange in a design.

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Begin by sewing down the first piece using an easy running stitch using the needle and some thread. Then, take the next piece that you want to have right next to the first and lay it design-side down overtop the first, so that the edges of the two pieces line up. Sew along that edge about a half inch away from the edge using a running stitch, then fold over that second piece, press it flat and sew it into place. Then you continue the process and build it out in a spiral until an entire square’s worth of space is entirely covered in bits of fabric.

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When you think you have enough pieces for a square, take the pencil and the quilters’ ruler (or whatever template you have to trace with) and trace the square onto the fabric. After that, sew a running stitch (or basting stitch) along the square edge to keep all the fabric in place and it's time for the embroidery! You can mix and match colors and use any kind of stitch you want connect each piece (and historically most crazy quilts were embroidered with every single stitch the artist knew about plus some, changing on each new edge between pieces, so you can get really creative here!) When you're done, use the scissors to cut about an inch or so from the square’s edge and neatly hem the edges, either by turning and felling the seam or using binding tape, and start again on another rectangle.

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When all the squares are complete, it’s time to connect them. Depending on what your vision for the quilt is, you might attach the squares by sewing them directly to each other, then adding a border of some kind as extra decoration. 

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A good example of an authentic Crazy Quilt from the era is “The 1888 Stevens Family Silk Crazy Quilt,” created by Gertrude Olny Stevens and her mother and sister. It was made out of scraps of silk, satin, cotton and velvet materials, arranged into twelve quilted 14.5 inch squares each framed by a 7.5 inch border and set around the edges with a gold silk cord and red sashing. The quilt is made-up of fabrics in a variety of different colors, though some have faded over time, and the embroidery is intricate and varied, including designs made of lines, ladders, dragonflies, geometric shapes and curves, cats, birds, a shooting star, anchors, and flowers. The joining embroidery is also embellished in a variety of different colors styles, such as cross stitch, feather stitch, buttonhole stitch, chain stitch, herring bone stitch, outline stitch, running stitch, satin stitch, and couching stitch, which was the most common to use at the time. It was donated to The National Museum of American history at the Smithsonian in 1945, and though it's available for viewing online it's currently not on public view in person.  

 

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Bibliography

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“1888 Stevens Family Silk Crazy Quilt.” National Museum of American History, https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_556349. 

 

“Analyzing an Antique Crazy Quilt ~ DancesWithPitBulls ~.” YouTube, YouTube, 15 Jan. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x23K1oRNocM. 

 

“Basic Crazy Quilt Piecing by Hand.” YouTube, YouTube, 31 May 2019, https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ye-ymTx228. 

 

“Basic Seam Stitching.” YouTube, YouTube, 11 June 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN60h7HEpLE. 

 

Editors, American Patchwork & Quilting. “History of the Crazy Quilt.” AllPeopleQuilt.com, https://www.allpeoplequilt.com/quilt-patterns/history-of-the-crazy-quilt. 

 

“A Fairyland of Fabrics: Crazy Quilts.” IQSCM | Exhibitions | A Fairyland of Fabrics: The Victorian Crazy Quilt, https://web.archive.org/web/20150412002720/http://www.quiltstudy.org/exhibitions/online_exhibitions/Fairyland/crazy_quilts1.html. 

 

“Yolo County Historical Collection Highlight- Crazy Quilt.” YouTube, YouTube, 27 Aug. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGf4TtzQBT4.