Contained Crazy Quilt from the Arizona project.
Someone asked what a Contained Crazy Quilt was.
I did a search on the Quilt Index site for the word "Contained"
and found several interesting quilts
Contained Crazy Quilt dated 1904
from the Quilts of Tennessee and the Quilt Index.
The documenters in the 1980s were using the words Contained Crazy Quilt to refer to these and it's a term that still communicates today.
Bates Family Parlor Throw, described as a contained crazy quilt.
New Haven, Connecticut. NMAH/Smithsonian collection.
I doubt it was a term used before the 1970s.
Unconfined craziness. Just irregular shapes scattered across the surface.
Many of these are from online auctions or found on the internet.
All of them unless dated are probably 1880 - 1910.
A perfect example of contained craziness from the Winedale Collection and the Quilt Index.
Those pieces may be embellished with linear embroidery.
But what makes it different from a regular old crazy quilt is that the crazy parts are contained within a standard repeated shape.
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Even a lot of those that look completely unconfined are based on squares or rectangles but the quiltmaker appliqued crazy pieces and embroidery over the seams to hide them. When you flip them over you notice the construction from the back.
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Craziness contained in a triangle
Diamond-shapes may be the most common kinds of containment.
Actually, most crazy quilts are confined, built on squares.
Crazy dated 1884, early in the fad.
There is probably a seam line right below that line in
the detail above but she's disguised it.
Dated 1893 by Leonard Mitchell, Columbus Quilt for
the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Illinois State Historical Society
Collection
So one could classify nearly every crazy quilt as a contained crazy quilt. But this does not make sense to us, so the definition for a contained crazy quilt must be...
Crazy patchwork contained in a shape other than a square or rectangle.
With exceptions on the fuzzy edges of the definition.
Contained or not? Everybody has to settle on their own definitions.
Alice Bowman Plummer, Indiana Project & the Quilt Index.
Alberta Project & the Quit Index