This wildly adventurous quilt was made by avid collector Frederick Burdett Butler. It is just one of the many quilts and rugs he made over the years to decorate his already cluttered living space. Diana Gibbons, who curated an exhibition featuring Butler's quilts and rugs in 2007 writes "A volume in Fred Butler’s scrapbook collection is titled ‘Needlework 1929-1930’. Included in the clippings is an article from The Ideal Home of October 1929, ‘The pleasure and profit of Patchwork’, in which the writer states -
'If we have little time and limited materials the quickest kind of patchwork quilt is that known as the crazy. For this all we need is a piece of lining the size we wish our quilt to be, an old sheet or piece of unbleached calico, or almost anything we have by us will do. Upon this we place our pieces of any size or shape we like, just how they happen to come, tack into position and finish with feather stitching over the joins.' The crazy quilts in Butler’s collection use a form of herringbone stitch instead of the feather stitch." A selection of Butler's quilts and rugs was purchased by Puke Ariki from Frances and Sereena Burton in 2008.