Background Information
“According to legend, a safe house along the Underground Railroad was often indicated by a quilt hanging from a clothesline or windowsill. These quilts were embedded with a kind of code, so that by reading the shapes and motifs sewn into the design, an enslaved person on the run could know the area’s immediate dangers or even where to head next.”
-Marie Claire Bryant, Underground Railroad Quilt Codes: What We Know, What We Believe, and What Inspires Us, Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage
Click to enlarge
Learn more!
FOR CHILDREN
Picture books:
- Follow the Drinking Gourd-Jeanette Winters
- The Patchwork Quilt-Bettye Stroud
- The Secret to Freedom-Marcia K. Vaughn
- Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt-Deborah Hopkinson
- Under the Quilt of Night-Deborah Hopkinson
Websites:
About the Underground Railroad:
To celebrate Black culture, experience, and history:
- https://www.slpl.org/black-history-month-2025/
- https://www.slcl.org/events/black-history-celebration
- https://explorestlouis.com/guide/black-culture/
FOR ADULTS
Craft Idea
Create your own freedom quilt to honor the incredibly brave people who risked everything for their freedom. Think about what symbols to use to share your message with the people trying to escape to freedom. See above for commonly used symbols, or design your own. See the video below for suggestions.
Some supplies you might use:
- Printed quilt block templates: http://mathwire.com/quilts/freedomtemplates.pdf
- Paper: construction, wrapping, scrap, magazine pages, junk mail, etc.
- Coloring supplies: crayons, markers, colored pencils, paints
- A ruler
- Scissors
- Glue
- 3D materials: yarn, buttons, pasta, fabric, etc.
If you’d like your artwork to be featured on this page, email a picture or video to danielle.lee@craftalliance.org. And check out the classes offered in our Fibers Studio. Happy crafting!