I've been thinking of starting doing some underground Railroad quilts. Any suggestions on which ones would be particularly good to start with?

Is there any sources that are better than others?

Bonni

I have the book "Hidden in Plain View" by Tobin it's written as a story and has all the blocks listed..however it has been questioned on the story itself..for whatever reasons.. it's still a great source for the blocks and "Eleanore Burns has 1 out..both show it as being done as a type of sampler quilt.. Hope this helps !!

Thanks. I'll have to look those up. I have a university instructor who would like me to make some up and show them in their class next year. I could even make small versions of them for right now (much more portable).

Bonni,
I have Tobin's book too signed by a descendant. If you want a quick rundown she suggests Monkey wrench, wagon wheel/carpenters wheel, bear paws, crossroads, log cabin, shoofly, bow ties, flying geese, drunkards path and follow the stars (star, evening star, north star).

There is also some speculation that the way the quilts were hung out to "air" provided some of the information to slaves who weren't allowed to learn to read.

I remember reading some place about the directions. That would make sense because unless people were quilters, they might not know what the name of the quilt patterns were. Thanks for the suggestions.

The Underground Railroad Sampler by Eleanor Burns has really good information. I don't do all of the blocks her way, but it is nice to learn new techniques even if you don't adopt them.

I found this site a while back, maybe it'll be useful for you.

http://www.osblackhistory.com/quilts.php

Very nice website.

When I was in grammar school, I lived in Ashtabula, Ohio on the shores of Lake Erie and the Unitarian/Universalist church there was rumored to have been used as the last way station before Canada on the Underground RR.

There was a group on this board who did Underground Railroad quilts a couple of years ago. You might try a search above and see what you find. I know there have been several different topics about it, some with excellent pics or lists of suggested blocks.