Like all historical "stories", I believe this one starts with the truth and then gets 'morphed' into a more interesting tale...
I recently read somewhere that women made log cabin quilts with black centers to hang outside indicating that the home was a "runaway" safe haven. That I believe. That entire "sampler" quilts were made with the blocks being instructions? Heh! Not so much. Remembering that the slaves, for the most part, were uneducated, and that human nature itself says that not everyone was good at puzzles, I have trouble believing the later...also, many whites of the time, even tho they had sympathy for the slaves and wanted to help, believed that blacks were simpletons, and to expect them to remember what the secret meanings of 12 quilt blocks were would have been beyond their comprehension. I think everything would have been kept much less complicated as the log cabin quilts with the black centers indicates.
I believe that instructions for escaping slaves would have been given one step at a time, since things were constantly changing as the "underground rail stations" were discovered and "closed"
Just my not so humble opinion! ;) :lol: