Crazy Quilts

Tutorial created by Kavita Premkumar, with help from Kiarra Burd, Joe Diemer, Kavita Premkumar, Lucie von Schilling, Rebekah Stretch, and Anne Hung

Online tutorial created by Priscilla Adebanji

 

Elizabeth Hickok Keeler’s 1883 Crazy Quilt. Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This quilt features an intricate collage of irregularly shaped, multicolour fabrics bordered by a thick red velvet-like material

 
 
 

Crazy quilts are the perfect way to use up scrap pieces of cloth and practice or display your embroidery skills. A hallmark of these quilts are the seemingly random arrangement of scraps that would not lend themselves to typical geometric quilt block arrangement, the “craziness” of the arrangements often masking meticulous compositional planning. Another key facet of these quilts is the lack of internal batting; these quilts were often created as showpieces, intended to display the creator’s skill rather than to provide warmth. Beverly Gordon, professor of textile and apparel design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, refers to crazy quilts as “true labours of love.” Her 2009 exhibition of crazy quilts shows the vast assortment of materials that could be employed in the making of a crazy quilt: cigar ribbons, wool suiting, calico, silk taffetas and satins, lace, embroidery, paint, ribbons, beading, sequins, and shells.

Most quilt historians suggest that the popularity of crazy quilts in the United States in the nineteenth century stemmed from the Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia in 1876. Visitors were struck by the lavish style, which they considered “exotic,” and the Industrial Revolution allowed women access to new fabrics with novel ranges of colour and texture. Materials used by a woman to create her quilt indicated her family’s economic status, with less well-to-do women using cheaper fabrics like cotton and wool in their creations. Crazy quilts reached their peak in the mid- to late-1880s, eventually replaced by more utilitarian and functional quilts as the 20th century approached. 

Want to learn more about this craft? Click here for a list of scholarly readings, blogs and websites, instructional videos, extant examples, and 19th-century tutorials.

To read some makers’ reflections on this craft, and to see what they made, click here.

You will need

  • Fabric scraps 

  • Needle & thread

  • Backing fabric 

  • Fabric scissors 

  • Ruler

For Instructors: Visit our Crafting in the Classroom page for information on embodied learning, or click here for further resources about this craft.

Various fabrics stitched into a square, placed in front of a laptop and a pair of scissors.

This form of quilting consists of two main stages. First, making fabric “blocks” for the quilt top, which will be exposed for display on the bed or couch, and then attaching these blocks to a backing (the plain bottom layer).

Stage 1: Making a fabric “block” 

Begin by cutting a foundation square (30cm by 30cm) from the backing fabric. Next, arrange a few fabric scraps on the foundation square until you’re happy with the placement.

 
 

Kavita’s sample quilt block made of various scraps of fabric (black with small yellow lemons, solid red, solid blue, light blue with a floral pattern, green-and-red plaid, green with a farm design, cream with a picture of an airplane

 

Unknown maker, 1875-1900 quilt block, Source: National Museum of American History. This quilt block features a variety of patterned and solid fabrics stitched together to form a square. The label below the square reads TE.T13529 B

 

Attach the scraps to the backing fabric by hand or using a machine. Any kind of stitch will do! For my sample quilt, I mostly used a cross-stitch. A running stitch would also work well, as demonstrated by Dr. Sabrina Mark in the Crafting Communities Broderie Anglaise tutorial.

For a larger quilt, you will want to make multiple blocks (repeating the steps above) and attach them together. Attaching the blocks to one another is similar to attaching the scraps to the foundation: place the edges of two blocks beside one another and pin them in place. To secure the fabric, a cross-stitch works much better than a running stitch.

 
 

Close-up of cross-stitches. White stitches attach the scraps to the backing fabric, and beige stitches attach the blocks to one another

 
 

Stage 2: Attaching the quilting top to the backing fabric

You can attach your fabric block to your backing fabric with a running stitch along the border. Since the pieces of fabric in the block are already sewn to one another, this running stitch simply holds the backing fabric to the block, concealing the stitches on the underside of the block.

 
 

Kavita’s completed crazy quilt, lying flat

 

Back of Kavita’s completed crazy quilt, showcasing the multicoloured stitches used to attach the scraps to the main piece of black fabric

 
 

Kavita’s completed crazy quilt, draped on a cream leather couch

 

Please send us your own work-in-progress and/or finished creations! Email us at craftyvictorians@gmail.com, tweet us @craftyvictorian, or connect with us on Instagram @crafty_victorians.