Quilt

This crazy quilt is adorned with an assortment of embroidered patterns popular at the time such as girls, shafts of wheat, cats, flowers, butterflies, fans, and flags. Figures of children are more commonly found on crazy quilts than adult figures. The main reason seems to lie in the embroidery patterns that were available. There were a great number of stamping patterns and transfer designs of children, the majority of which were copies of Kate Greenaway figures, as seen depicted on this quilt of a girl rolling a hoop, which first appeared in the December 15th, 1883 issue of Harper’s Bazar. Many campaign ribbons and other souvenirs were saved and sewn onto crazy patchwork in the same way that they would have been pasted into albums twenty years earlier. This quilt declares its local provenance through several ribbons and a badge that mention Utica institutions. The first is a badge from the Utica Daily Press Fresh-Air Excursion which began news publication in 1882, as well as four printed ribbons from the St. Joseph’s Building Society.