CRAZY QUILT

ca. 1894-1900

Gift of Minnie Dissett Webb

1984.28.01

Montana achieved statehood on November 8, 1889. By that time Montana was the nation's leading producer of copper. Irish and Cornish miners had already flocked to Butte, and by the 1890s Germans, Finns, Italians, and Easter European Slavs were being drawn to Butte's mines and refineries in Anaconda, Black Eagle, and East Helena. In 1890 women comprised thrity-four percent of the state's population. As the century worn on, women were able to draw inspiration from ladies' magazines and had greater access to fabrics, sewing machines, and patterns from mail-order catalogs. For many affluent women, quilting became an art and a luxury, a way to spend their free time in an enjoyable pursuit.

Minnie Dissett Webb worked on this quilt by kerosene lamp while her husband labored the night shifts in the mines around Phillipsburg. Note the "Anaconda" ribbons demonstrate the maker's suppoert for Anaconda as the location of the state capital.