When Margaret Beattie created this quilt, she was taking part in a wildly popular nationwide trend. In the 1880s and 1890s, women all over America were crafting “crazy quilts” that featured busy arrangements of bits of fabric, colorful embroidery stitches, and hand-painted details. The designs were inspired by a variety of sources including the Aesthetic Movement, Japanese design, and the Victorian interest in fantasy and enchantment. When Beattie completed the quilt on April 26, 1883, she recorded the date in the upper right square(detail). She also honored friends and family members who may have helped her complete this large task by including their initials and names.
An increasingly commercialized, nationwide popular culture helped bring the crazy quilt fad to Wisconsin. Widely available women’s magazines like the Ladies’ Home Journal and Godey’s Ladies’ Book advocated the new style as a fashionable, modern alternative to cotton patchwork quilts and advertised packets of fabric scraps for sale by domestic silk-makers. Women could also purchase preprinted images in popular motifs for embroidering on quilts. For instance, Kate Greenaway Girls and their exaggerated bonnets were well-known figures from children’s books. An embroidered image of two Greenaway Girls appears in the lower middle section of Beattie’s quilt(detail). A commercially printed fragment featuring three of the girls appears in the upper left.
Find more crazy quilts made by Wisconsin women in the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database.