Not too long ago I came to be in possession of what I consider to be the quintessential quilt— a New York Beauty or Rails through the Mountains from around 1860 to 1870. It represented everything I love about old quirky quilts— simple fabrics with bold color, a complicated pattern retaining its points, and gorgeous quilting. I listed it for a healthy price on eBay while secretly hoping it would be in my possession forever so I could take it to demonstrations, photograph my kids in front of it as they age, and generally swoon over it every time I passed through Studio A off my living room. After some minor repair and further study, I realized that the pattern was well suited to foundation piecing and I began to remember my dreams of publishing a line of patterns based off of the old quilts I’ve had the pleasure to handle. 

I woke up one morning to find that I was not the only one so enchanted with this old quilt, and proceeded to accept the reasonable offer that had been made. Moments later I realized I had a short number of hours to glean the detail off the quilt I would need to recreate it.

Scrambling, I posted in a Facebook group called  “For the Love of Paper Piecing” for sage advice on the logistics of this operation. Surely there was a wise and easy way of approaching this! The first ideas to come through included copying the quilt in sections on a photocopier but I quickly found out that the bed of home office HP just wasn’t big enough to consider trying (not to mention that the scanner light might be less than beneficial for 155-year old fabric).

I had some tissue-like packing paper left over from a recent splurge at my nearby Pottery Barn Outlet (yes, love it) but I needed a light box to be able to see through the thin batt of the quilt enough to trace the pattern. In a moment of desperation I pushed my sewing machine platform down on its hydraulics and aimed my task light up through the whole. Taking apart a picture frame (from said splurge) with glass large enough to span the opening— voila! A light box for pattern making.

And as it happens, it turned out to be a nice backlit background for video recording the stitching process! I plan to publish this pattern in a full-edition paper piecing set and kit. But members of the fb paper piecing group will get a freebie— once I find the time to break it down and test it!