Underground Railroad Quilts
 
  • "Oberlin Senior Citizens, Oberlin (Lorain County), 1982.  103" x 70".  Appliqued and embroidered.  Collection of Oberlin Seniors, Inc.   In this quilt, Oberlin's senior citizens commemorated their town's active involvement in the Underground Railroad one hundred years earlier.  Quiltmakers studied Oberlin's history, then designed and made the blocks.  This arrangement of pictorial blocks in a horizontal set was popular with quiltmakers throughout Ohio beginning in 1976, when so many of them made quilts to celebrate America's bicentennial year."  pg. 159 Quilts in Community pic.Oberlin.jpg (42720 bytes)

 
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  • pic. pg. 160 Quilts in Community "Thirteen of the twenty-five makers of the Underground Railroad Quilt gather for their picture.  Some of these women descend from blacks who came to Oberlin during the Civil War to escape slavery.  The group also includes descendants of Oberlin citizens active in the Underground Railroad."   Photo by Myron Miller, Lady's Circle Patchwork Quilts.
 
  • Barbara Payne has created an Underground Railroad Quilt  She is featured in the book, A Communion of Spirit: African American Quilters, Preservers and their Stories and is a member of the National Women of Color Quilting Network.
  • Columbus Metropolitan Quilters made a quilt for Cathy Nelson president of the Friends of Freedom Society - it is in the shape of Ohio with the map of the underground railroad stitched into it.   

 

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