One of the things that I’ve learned so far today (I learn something new, sometimes several somethings new, every day) concerns cracked ice. I was reading Tokyo Jinga’s blog ( ) and came across a post entitled “Japan-a-mania.Cracked Ice and Crazy Quilts”. In part, it states: “It is believed that the term “crazy” quilt comes from the “crazing” of the porcelain glaze. The word “crazy” at that time would have also meant broken and irregular. The pattern design comes from a well-known Japanese pattern called “cracked ice”.
Downloadable Patterns > Cracked Ice Pattern uses Essentials by Wilmington Prints. This throw quilt or twin coverlet uses all 20 colors in a layout that suggests cracked colors and fractured blocks. Pattern Quilt Gallery Ice Stars is an easy to piece quilt. Made here from a yummy collection of colors from the Cracked Ice Collection and Crisp White and Stone Chips Sparkle from EBI Fabrics.
Quilting designs had always been based on uniform and regularly shaped pieces of fabric, sewn into repeating patterns and then quilted in a uniform pattern as well. For the first time asymmetric and irregular patches of fabric were being cut and sewn and decorated along their seams.” Following is an example of what crazing on pottery looks like. 1883 “Floris Ligna” by Pratt & Simpson / Wallis Gimson Toyko Jinga continued with “Unlike earlier (and later) quilts, crazy quilts were not made with a sense of thrift or recycling, even though it may seem so as they utilize bits and pieces of valuable fabrics such as silks and velvets. Nor were they made for warmth as they do not typically have a batting layer in between the top and the back. Crazy quilts were originally made by well-to-do women in the middle and upper classes to demonstrate their needlework skills and show that they had the leisure time to make completely ornamental pieces.
The use of the word quilt is a misnomer – crazy quilts were not used as quilts at all – nobody slept with them. They were made to be displayed.” “While the 1870s and 1880s were the heyday of American fascination with the exotic, the craze for crazy quilts died down by 1910. By then, cracked ice patterns and many other Japanese motifs had fueled the Aesthetic Movement and helped to launch Art Nouveau and later Modernism.” To read Tokyo Jinja’s entire post and see photos of Japanese porcelain and crazy quilt examples, please click this link: The following crazy quilt was made in 1884 by Rebecca Palmer and is now at the Brooklyn Museum.