"Basket Weave" (Freedom Quilting Bee name: "Crazy" quilt)

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    Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio
1975
Cotton, velveteen, double knit
89 x 80 inches
Collection of
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund and partial gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation
Description

This quilt suggests the complex interactions provoked between local tradition and market demand. It is pieced in a pattern featured in bee sales brochures and adheres to the pattern quite rigorously, made in consistent shades of commercially available cloth.  But it is chromally distinct: these are not typical bee shades and Young creates an optical illusion by matching colors that visually consolidate one block with the next.