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As you know I have been trying to finishes several quilts that I started and this is one of them. Its the Underground Railroad quilt from the book by Eleanor Burns. She wrote the book after reading a book called "
Hidden in Plain View". I love the
story's about how they would hang quilts out to communicate information about the Underground Railroad. It was like a code to guide slaves to freedom. Each block would tell a different way for them to go, like the
monkey wrench block told them to turn the wagon wheel towards Canada on the
Bear's paw trail which is a block, to the
crossroads which is another block. I just find it fascinating that they would use quilts to send these codes. There was ten quilts used to direct the slaves to get ready for escape, the quilts would be hung one at a time on a fence or cabin door! There was also a few other blocks used as secondary patterns.
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I love the back of this quilt as much as the front! I also made another set of these blocks for my daughter to use in her 5
Th grade class when she was teaching about the underground railroad. She had her class choose one block and they cut it out of colored paper and glued there blocks onto another piece of paper. Then they hung there blocks out in the hall to form a quilt!
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Here she is hanging in my hallway just off from the great room. I found the reproduction fabrics from 1840-1880 on
eBay, the backing also came from
eBay.
I hope you liked the history lesson I know I loved making this quilt!
Happy Fall!
Julie