By the time this American instructional pamphlet was published in 1885, as it states, Crazy work was “so popular as to require but little instruction.” With this booklet, a quiltmaker could copy the fancy stitches, but when it came to color choice, “no directions can be given . . . as this is where the taste of the worker is displayed.”

The pamphlet text confirms the general consensus of the times that the irregularly shaped silks should be sewn together haphazardly "so that the angles may somewhat imitate the craze or crackle of old china, from which all this kind of work derives its name.”