A maker’s racial background is notoriously hard to discern from a quilt itself, and likely there are quilts made by African Americans in the IAD despite the project’s geographic limitations and emphasis on the high-style traditions of European Americans. The National Gallery now presumes that this figurative appliqué quilt documented by the IAD in New York City was made by a free Black quilter living in New York. The quiltmaker used a distinct technique of embroidering features onto black cloth to create the human figures; this technique along with its figurative design and scalloped edge make this quilt very similar to another quilt signed “Sarah Ann Wilson Aug 1854” (now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago) that historians believe was created by the same maker. The present location of the painted quilt is unknown.