When did the crazy quilt fad begin? We quilt historians dither.
But here is an early reference explaining the whole thing.
Early, 1881
Boston Globe, February 2, 1881
"I am making the loveliest Japanese silk quilt..." Amelia
The columnist compares the "Japanese" quilt to the hexagon rosette,
"hundreds of tiny pieces cut with great exactness, laid smoothly together 'over and over.'"
Old-fashioned silk style combined with the new.
From Laura Fisher's estate
I've found other references to "crazy quilt" or "Japanese quilt" later in the year 1881 but the February description to a Japanese quilt may be the earliest. The terms seem interchangeable.
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Dated 1887, Isabella M. Smith, Dayton, Kentucky
West Virginia Project & the Quilt Index
1882
I've been dating these as about 1882 at the earliest but I am going to have to move my estimate back a year. Crazy quilts date to 1881. Didn't find any references to either term in 1880.
Here's a reference to "Crazy work" in a quilt dated 1885
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A 1904 "Slumbering Robe"
W. E. Prosser
Isabelle Ossing, West Virginia Project,
but made in Columbus, Ohio
1889 Grandma Wise
