History:

Crazy quilts were originally a method for using scraps of cloth, much like string quilts which were pieced using paper strips from newspapers or magazines. Crazy quilts emerged as a style primarily after the Civil War, and later gained widespread popularity among quilters in the late twentieth century. This crazy quilt likely dates to the mid-twentieth century, and is made of scraps from women’s dresses and men’s suits, creating a blend of light and gauzy silks contrasted by heavy wools and velvets. Though not a traditional quilt, this summer quilt, so called for its lack of batting, is tacked together with clipped pieces of string. Quiltmaker Aunt Arie Carpenter also recycled cotton sugar sacks for the quilt lining. She shared a little about this quilt with Foxfire students when she donated it in the 1970s:

“I enjoy quilting the best of anything in this world. Get your cloth and get whatever design [you want to make]. How I wish I could quilt like I used to. This is Uncle Fred Childer’s wife’s scraps [in the quilt top]. All these is. Now I’d piece her one and me one, and she’d get her half and I’d get my half. That’s how [I] come to have so many quilts. Of course, I never had no such dresses as this. We wasn’t able to have it.”

She painstakingly embellished the quilt with intricate embroidery in bright colors, most of which are variations of the feather stitch.  Listen to Mary Franklin explain decorative embroidery on quilts.