More Crazy Quilt Outliers

Interpreting statistics requires some art as well as science. My last post was about outliers---Crazy Quilts with dates inscribed on them that were outside the trends.  Choosing what to include in the data and what to eliminate is interpretation.

Here's a detail of one with an obvious commemorative date of 1874. The quilt wasn't made then; the date commemorates a birthday. I wouldn't include it as a date-inscribed quilt.

Crazy Quilt date-inscribed 1887

The range of date-inscribed examples leads me to believe Crazy Quilts date to after 1880, and I've believed 1882 might be the beginning of the fad.

Crazy Quilt date-inscribed 1882

The database I developed 20 years ago had as the earliest examples three quilts dated 1882.

But here's an outlier I can't dismiss so easily from the database.

I found this top in an online auction. It's crazy---made up of random shaped pieces.

Although the embroidery is rather minimal, the seams are covered with decorative stitching, a characteristic of crazy quilts.

And it's dated 1881 (that second 8 is a little odd but I think that's what it says.)

1881.

P. Cady.

70.AGE

This one might be a commemorative quilt much like those dated 1874, an outlier. But the date of 1881 is not far enough outside the trend to eliminate it, so I have to change my conclusions. I have to conclude that the earliest example is dated 1881.

It is an interesting quilt. Most of the 1880 crazies are made of silk and silk combination fabrics with lavish embroidery, but this one is made of delaines and challis, combination fabrics of wool and cotton, clothing popular before the 1880s.

We don't want to draw any conclusions about the origins of the crazy quilt style based on one example. I am always looking for crazies dated before 1884 and hope to find more dated 1881.

Let's hope whoever bought the delaine crazy top didn't intend to use it as a cutter. It's not the most dramatic quilt but it does seem to have some historical significance.

Crazy Quilt Outliers

Crazy Quilt by Sarah Frances Coolidge,

date inscribed 1882, from Copake Auction House

 In my 1989 book Clues in the Calico I wrote:

Crazy Quilts are so recognizable and so commonplace they are among the easiest quilts to learn to date, especially since there is a simple rule: There were no Crazy Quilts made before the late 1870s.... Because women made so many Crazy Quilts, and because they dated them (they are among the most commonly dated style of quilt), we can track the trend well through the dated examples.

Crazy Quilt date-inscribed 1885, from dealer Laura Fisher

In the past twenty years I've seen a lot more crazy quilts. I still agree with my younger self: There were no crazy quilts before the late 1870s. But now that I've seen so many more I am going to narrow that time frame and say there were no crazy quilts before 1880. 

 

Crazy quilt date-inscribed 1900

Here are the statistics from the database I created 20 years ago:

There were 97 date-inscribed Crazy Quilts in the database.

The earliest of the 97 were three examples dated 1882.

For the years between 1882 and 1889, I found 36 examples.
In the decade 1890-99 there were 29....

Detail of a Crazy Quilt dated 1882 in ink

Crazy Quilt date-inscribed 1892

In that database I found some outliers. In statistics an outlier is defined as

An outlying observation, one that appears to deviate markedly from other members of the sample in which it occurs.

In Clues in the Calico, I said that I eliminated two quilts from the database, two crazies date-inscribed 1846 and 1868. These dates were so far earlier than the rest of the 67 quilts that I felt I had to eliminate them as outliers. Those dates were so markedly deviant that they would lead us to false conclusions. The dates may have been altered, added later or commemorative of a birthdate or other year rather than the year the quilt was made.

I do recall seeing one Crazy Quilt dated 1691 when we were doing the Kansas Quilt Project. Someone had picked out the embroidery changing the second numeral, an 8, into a 6. This was also an outlier and I ignored it.
 
 

I recently saw this Crazy Quilt in an online auction. It's an outlier and my first thought was that someone had changed the date 1894 to 1874, but in the picture there is no evidence of that. Then I looked at the rest of the quilt. 

The tied quilt was wool and wool blends, rather minimally embroidered, the kind you often find dated about 1900. A few of the blocks had words or dates on them.

I think the date February 17th, 1874 is commemorative and it has something to do with Mamma, possibly the day she died.
So I am sticking to my 1880 guideline.

This one with dates from 1854-1888 must also commemorate something in the family whose last name starts with a W. Death dates? Birth dates?
I'll post more about outliers in my next post.