Underground Railroad Quilts

This year I became very interested in the origin of quilt blocks.  I read Hidden in Plain View by Jacqueline Tobin and started to do some research on line about the idea of using quilts as symbols to guide slaves on the Underground Railroad.  I then read Elanor Burns Quilt in a Day Underground Railroad Sampler which has patterns for all of the quilts in the quilt code.  I decided to make a sampler quilt.  I then turned my research into a presentation for the quilt guild. 

Each block represents a code on the Underground Railroad.  The last square on the bottom right is a copy of the code printed on fabric paper.

There is a lot of controversy about whether the quilt code is true.  I made sure to address that in my presentation but also highlight that the idea of a quilt code is interesting in itself whether it is true or not.  And as a quilter I love the idea of the blocks symbolizing something.

I quilted each row separately and then attached the rows. This made the quilting easier to manage.  Especially because at the time I made this I did not have my new machine.

The presentation went well.  It was fun to lecture on a topic that was not work related.