I just finished a class for this quilt. It was fun and I learned alot about making various blocks. I will post a pic when I get it finished. I'm a new quilter and am not really taking the class for the historical fact or lore but rather just to learn more about quiltimaking.

Jennifer Chiaverini has two books on the Underground railroad - "The Runaway Quilt" and "The Lost Quilter". You have to read the Runaway Quilt first, because it is about Joanna, the slave. Marvelous books, both of them, very educational, as well as exciting. I liked the part where the niece was making the quilt for the uncle - first book - not saying another word.

I have all of Jennifer Chiaverini's books and love each one more than the last. And, if you start at the beginning, you get to know all of these people like they are members of your family. Just finished "The Aloha Quilt". Edie

Just have to share about the URRQ. Our daughter-in-law had a college class requirement to do a poster for her Social Studies Class. Several girls went together and decided on the Underground Railroad (URRQ) for their project. She asked me for some fabric to put on the poster and I told her I would just make some quilt blocks. I made the various URRQ blocks (about 7" square) and typed up what each block represented on a little tag and mailed them to her--their poster won first place and she "aced the course." Of course, they had a lot of the story to go along with the blocks. I love the story and also believe it to be true.

Our quilt club made the UGRR quilt as a project; unfortunately I still have to finish mine. Some of the members did finish theirs and they were beautiful. It was a fascinating story and one of our members had a greatgrandmother who was a slave and researched the story for us. I read some comments about this by Barbara Brackman and was really dismayed by the "attitude" I got. She essentially seemed to discount the whole idea, citing what patterns were in existence, etc. As a side thought, my daughter teaches middle school history and told me that this method of communication existed in the Revolutionary War. I tend to believe that the purpose of the quilt is true.

One of my friends in my group got together every week to work on a block. She was much better at quilting than I was so it really helped to have her help me. I loved working on it. Finished it and gave it to my boyfriends' daughter for her birthday. There were 6 of us working on our quilts. I learned alot by doing the blocks.

I think the underground railroad quilts have emerged as a great marketing and educational tool for the civil war time period. But I have read many things, and we had an expert lecture at our guild that really discounts the quilts as an urban myth. As some have said, many blocks were not created till many years later. There are some basic things that just don't make sense. Did slaves really need a block to tell them to follow the north star?
Slaves needed travel in complete darkness. Is is really reasonable to expect them to come so close to a house that they could clearly see a quilt? Why would a block need to tell them to take a monkey wrench - they had to travel lightly and not drag tools around. But it is a great story, and brings to light the plight of escaping slaves.

Not meaning to discount an expert lecturer or anything, but regarding the monkey wrench patch, it basically meant to get together those things you would need because the time to escape was coming and you needed to get your 'tools' together, not a monkey wrench, per se but food, a compass if you owned one, etc. I believe it was in Tobin and Dobard's book "Hidden in Plain View" which I purchased when on a trip to the Civil War Museum in Harriisburg through which the UGRR 'ran'. It seems that no matter how a story is told, or when, it invariably gets things added to it but this book did not include Sunbonnet Sue because the authors stuck strictly with the information from an African-American lady they met in SC whose parents escaped slavery perhaps using the North Star (needing a clear night to do this, remember you could get very close to a house because there were no porch lights :) or went toward Dresden OH, (dresden plate)
It is fascinating to think of this period in our history. I lived in a house in Shippensburg PA which had hidden slaves on their way north. Interesting discussion. Keep Qulting!!

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:

I havent made an underground railroad quilt but i have started a quilt using the blocks from the book. Civil War Love Letter Quilt.

Although not having something written doesn't mean it isn't true. Perhaps we are so into believing what we see in print it taints us to believing in what is spoken. These days, our brains are not tuned in to remembering things for very long, at lease mine isn't ;). It is a shame that many people believed in the 'simpleton' idea but thankfully, not all believed that.
I thought it might be an interesting idea to make an UGRR quilt from strictly african prints so a few years ago I started collecting those and got a book to make the quilts. It's in my TBS (to be started) stash.