Untitled Crazy Quilt

Artist:

Kim F. Hall.

Hand sewn and embroidered with a variety of commercial fabrics. Velvet border, satin backing.

Year:

1992

Dimensions:

92H x 72.5W

Kim F. Hall: I can't remember when I started embroidery, but I did a lot of crafts as a kid and was often gifted craft kits and supplies. Our neighbor, a Home Economics teacher, gave me a terrific book with a variety of embroidery stitches. When I came across a quilt magazine with crazy quilt instructions (I suspect crazy quilts might have had a renaissance in the 1970s/80s), I saw an opportunity to practice fancier stitches. My mom has always made clothes for family and friends and at various times had a side business as a clothing designer, so I had access to lots of the fancier fabrics used in traditional crazy quilts.

I worked on this quilt throughout college and graduate school, but lost the magazine in the middle of making the quilt. I had never seen a crazy quilt in person and didn't have the online resources we have now, so I didn't realize it was OK for the individual block lines to show. This meant that the quilt took much longer than it should have because eventually I couldn't work on it piecemeal.

But misunderstanding the quilt structure gave me the opportunity to use bigger textile pieces that have meaning for me. The quilt includes a piece of favorite jeans I had embroidered, dresser scarves embroidered by my grandmothers, a cross-stitched unicorn I got as part of a Secret Santa in college and other items. The maroon velvet border and pink satin backing were leftover from my aunt's wedding. I recently read about an 80 year old quilter who kept adding items to her crazy quilt and I've begun to do the same.