Crazy quilting

[1] Crazy quilts became popular in the late 1800s, likely due to the English embroidery and Japanese art that was displayed at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.

American audiences were drawn to the satin stitches used in English embroidery, which created a painterly surface, which is reflected in many crazy quilts.

Similar aesthetics began to show up in crazy quilts, including unique patterns, and stitching that resembled spider webs and fans.

[2] Crazy quilting rapidly became a national fashion amongst urban, upper-class women, who used the wide variety of fabrics that the newly industrialized 19th century textile industry offered to piece together single quilts from hundreds of different fabrics.

Long after the style had fallen out of fashion amongst urban women, it continued in rural areas and small towns, whose quilters adopted the patterns of the urban quilts but employed sturdier, more practical fabrics, and dropped the earlier quilts' ornate embroidery and embellishment.