Although we don’t know who made this particular quilt or where it was made, by inspecting every aspect of its materials and techniques we can deduce quite a bit about its history. Most of the fabrics date from the 1860 to 1890 era. One row, however, is different from the rest. You can find it by looking for fabrics with vibrant, saturated colors and unconventional designs—hot pinks and bright greens on black backgrounds, for instance. These types of fabrics, sometimes called “eccentrics,” are a defining style of the 1890s and early 1900s and the bottom row of this quilt is full of them. Therefore, we theorize that the top seven rows were created before 1890, but remained unfinished for many years, and the bottom row was added around 1900, perhaps to make the quilt longer to fit a particular bed.