'Crazy quilts' exhibited at Annandale NHS
Things – quilts, actually – are getting crazy at Annandale National Historic Site with a new exhibit in the Pratt Gallery, “Those Crazy Quilts,” dedicated to a long-forgotten type of intricate blanket-making.
The exhibit, which opened in Tillsonburg Aug. 25, showcases a type of quilting that has since fallen out of fashion: crazy quilts, or intricate quilts made out of leftover fabrics and meant as showpieces in Victorian homes.
“It is a really artistic medium,” said Jen Gibson, collections and exhibitions specialist at the site. “Women would show off their embroidery skills. It is amazing.”
Unlike the quilting we might think of now, with neat squares and a defined pattern, crazy quilts were made of pieces of all sizes, giving them their “crazy” appearances.
But the needlework was intricate and the quilts were often made with ribbons and embroidered with family members’ names, said Gibson, meaning they became de facto scrapbooks of families and organizations.
“I like that they tell stories and can be used as scrapbooks,” Gibson said, noting one in the display that had a ribbon from an 1877 event sewn into the quilt.
The style was used from the 1880s, peaking in popularity in the 1890s, and declined from there. A couple of the quilts on display were made more recently, including one in the museum’s collection made in the 1960s from dresses from the ’30s and ’40s.
The exhibit was about a month in the making, and was supplemented with crazy quilts from other Southwestern Ontario museums in addition to the three from the museum’s collection. It’s a relatively short exhibition, in large part because the fine fabrics shouldn’t be exposed to too much light, Gibson said.
The exhibit runs from Aug. 25 to Sept. 29. Find more information at tillsonburg.ca.