The first products made of patches appeared in Rus in the 10th-11th centuries. Women wove cloth manually till the middle of the 18th century. The main raw materials were flax, hemp and wool. Raw material supplies were limited, so the fabric was woven exactly for the piece of clothing, with no material being wasted. The clothes were treated gently even after they were not worn any more. That's why the flaps were not carefully cut first, but were used entirely.
Cotton fabrics became available with the development of machine building. They were distinguished by their lightness, diversity and cheapness. Flaps of these fabrics began to be used for decorating clothes.
In the second half of the XIX century the overseas chintz appears in Russian stores. This event is considered to be the second birth of patchwork.
But the tradition revived only for a little while. In the twentieth century patchwork was completely forgotten for 40 years. It was noticed again in the 70s, when the folk style entered the fashion. Later the museums began to study patchwork as a form of art. Samples replenished collections of folk art of the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Art in Moscow and the Ivanovo Chintz Museum.
But the technique was mentioned not only by the museum staff, but also by the artists. For example, the method of patchwork mosaic was used by avant-garde artists, especially often this method was resorted to by Aristarchus Lentulov.
