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We Gather Together

July marks my book club’s sixteenth anniversary. Every month we gather in one of our homes, ostensibly to discuss a book, but also to chat, catch up, drink a glass of wine and indulge in tasty snacks. I’ve never been much for groups, but I’ve loved being part of this gathering of women. The toddlers who wandered in and out of our meetings in our early days are in college or college-bound. Several of us were pregnant that first year, and now those babies are getting their driver’s licenses. Liz’s hair is still naturally red, but in recent years the rest of us have had to make the choice: Go gray or go to an excellent colorist?

We meet every month and we talk and we eat and drink. Every year we have a Christmas party, and every year Suzanne brings sugared pecans and something marvelous from the local bakery. Mary Beth makes meatballs and brings several bottles of good wine; my specialties are pimento cheese crackers and deviled eggs. We were sad when Danielle moved to Charlotte four years ago, and if we’re being honest about it, the loss of her Christmas party baked brie ranked high on the list of reasons why.

There’s an epidemic of loneliness in the U.S., which seems especially ironic in this age of hyper-connectivity. The only way to beat it? Gather together and take care of each other. Pass around the plate, feed one another and be fed. If you’re a quilter, join a guild or start a bee. I’ve always said quilting is the only sorority I’ve ever joined. There’s nothing like getting together with a bunch of people who love what you love and understand why you love it.

Below is my recipe for deviled eggs. Today I was working on a new Florence chapter for Friendship Album, 1933; in it, she tells a gentleman friend (and who might that be?) that she’d never had a deviled egg until she went on a picnic with Emmeline. Emmeline’s cook, Cora, made deviled eggs for the occasion, and Florence couldn’t get enough of them. That inspired me to post my deviled eggs recipe, so I’m giving the credit to Cora. Enjoy!

Cora's Deviled Eggs

Cora’s Fourth of July Deviled Eggs
(Recipe Makes Twelve (if everything goes well))

Ingredients

  • 6 extra large eggs, a little on the old side*
  • 2-3 Tbs Mayonnaise (Duke’s Mayo for people who really care about mayo; light is okay, full fat is best. It is against the law to make deviled eggs with fat free mayonnaise)
  • 2 Tbs Apple Cider Vinegar
  • 1 tsp Mustard
  • ½ tsp Paprika (optional)

Directions

Hardboil the eggs. To do this, place six eggs in a pan and cover with water (eggs should be covered by at least an inch of water). Bring water to a full boil. Once boil is achieved, take the pan off heat and let sit for 13 minutes. Pour out the hot water and fill the pan with cold water, filling and refilling until the water stays cool. Peel the eggs and halve.

Place the yolks into a small bowl and put the egg halves on a plate or a platter. Mix the yolks, mayo, vinegar and mustard and beat until creamy. Add another tablespoon of mayo if need be. Fill the egg halves with the yolk mixture and sprinkle on some paprika to make the eggs pretty.

*I often buy a carton of eggs a week in advance—slightly older eggs are easier to peel. Another way to make it easy to get the shell off your hard-boiled egg is to put in two teaspoons of vinegar and half a teaspoon of salt into the water with the eggs before you put the heat on. Another tip: I usually I boil seven eggs and abandon the whites of one—this way I have plenty of filling.

Cora’s Fourth of July Deviled Eggs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes: Friendship Album, 1933: Episode 4

Over the last year, Dorothy has spent her fair share of time worrying about Bess and her family (too much time, her husband would say), but in Episode 4 her own family troubles take center stage. Meanwhile, Emmeline does research for her role as Emma Brown, wondering how she’ll ever come up with a wardrobe of last year’s fashions.

While leafing through the latest Sears Catalog, Emmeline comes across the announcement for the Sears Quilt Contest. The official title of the contest was Sears Century of Progress Quilt Contest, and the grand prize was $1,000, a huge amount of money in 1933—nearly $20,000 in today’s dollars. The deadline for the first round of judging was May 15, 1933, and quilters were encouraged to enter newer quilts. “It is not our intention,” the contest copy read, “to make this an exhibit of antiques and heirlooms.”

Now here was an outfit she rather liked—a two-piece angora knit in blue with gray, brown with gray, or a two-tone green. The skirt had a kicky little pleat in the front and the top was belted, perfect for showing off Emmeline’s slim waist.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the definitive history of the Sears Contest was written by Merikay Waldvogel and Barbara Brackman, in Patchwork Souvenirs of the 1933 World’s Fair (Rutledge Hill Press: 1993). This is a highly readable account of the biggest quilt competition in U.S. history. Merikay, a noted quilt historian and all-around wonderful woman, has been an invaluable source to me, both through this book and via the phone, where she’s answered my questions about kits and patterns and given me a great idea or two for some upcoming chapters.

Author’s Notes

  • In this episode we meet Dorothy’s daughter, Hannah, a part-time librarian and a graduate of Spelman College, a historically black college for women in Atlanta. Since recording this chapter, I’ve learned that Oberlin College in Ohio started accepting African American students in 1835. It’s possible that when I revise I’ll switch Hannah’s alma mater, just because it seems more realistic to me that the Johnsons would send their only daughter to a school closer to home.
  • Something I’ve thought a lot about: In real life, it’s unlikely (though not impossible) that Dorothy would be part of this quilting bee, and it’s perhaps unrealistic that most of the characters are so accepting. Even Emmeline isn’t resistant to Dorothy’s presence; she’s just baffled by it. The fact is, Emmeline has never considered the possibility that African-American women make quilts and has to ask her housekeeper, Cora, about it. Her ignorance and lack of curiosity is a milder form of racism than one might expect in this era, but it’s racism nonetheless. Is it realistic she’ll get past it? This is something that’s on my mind as I write…
  • Have you visited the Quiltfiction Pinterest page yet? I’ve got a Friendship Album, 1933 board, with a section for each of the characters. It’s a work-in-progress, and I’m having a great time looking for images of Florence’s house, Emmeline’s wardrobe and vintage photos of the sort of African American community I imagine that Dorothy and Wallace live in.

Contest Rules for the Sears Century of Progress Quilt Contest

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Eula Baker’s Blue Ribbon Chocolate Cake

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What was it like to live in the 1930s? To keep a home, make quilts, raise children, work, and worry?

Friendship Album, 1933, the book I’m currently writing and reading aloud on the Quiltfiction Podcast, takes place during the heart of the Great Depression. All of the story’s main characters, Eula, Bess, Florence, Dorothy, and Emmeline, have been affected by the economic downturn, but to different degrees. Eula and her husband have had to sell their farm, and their sons have scattered across the country to find work. Emmeline and Florence’s lives, on the other hand, haven’t changed much at all. Their wealth comes from the insurance industry, which stayed strong even when markets collapsed.

Dorothy is African-American, and her husband, Wallace, drives a delivery truck for a small dairy company. Like many African-American families of that time, only two generations out of slavery, they had little accumulated wealth when the stock market crashed in 1929. The times have always been hard for people like the Johnsons, but they own their home, have strong family bonds, and both Dorothy and Wallace have managed to keep their jobs when many others lost theirs.

As for Bess, in spite of her husband’s death, she’s managed to keep her house and keep enough money in the bank to stay on this side of financial disaster. It helps that her parents have been able to support her in small ways.

Eula Baker's Blue Ribbon Chocolate Cake

One of my favorite parts of writing historical fiction is researching what was it like to keep a home, make quits, raise children, and work in the 1930s. Now you, too, can give “Eula Baker’s Blue Ribbon Chocolate Cake” a try, straight from the pages of Friendship Album, 1933.

Whatever their problems, the characters I’ve created here have still managed to avoid the harshest realities of that era. I hope you’ll forgive me if I pad reality just a little bit as I explore their lives. I want Friendship Album, 1933 to be realistic, but also warm and, yes, comforting.

Sort of like a quilt.

What’s very real to me in this story is that a group of five very different women are able to form a friendship because they share a love of quilt-making. Given how many friendships I’ve made through quilting, this seems as realistic to me as anything I can think of.

Here’s the thing: So many people I know feel stressed and disconnected right now. Whenever I check out Facebook or Twitter, it’s hard to process all the rage. People talk past each other, dismiss one another, can’t tolerate the least difference of opinion. A friend of mine recently did a TedX talk on the social media call-out culture, and was lacerated for it by the social media call-out culture. It was horrifying.

Turning to this story, writing the lives of these women as they make their quilts and sort through their problems, comes as a relief after all the discord I experience in the real world. When the pleasure of a good cup of coffee and a piece of chocolate cake is enough to brighten Bess’s day, when Eula and Dorothy bond over a poorly-written quilt pattern, when the normally self-centered Emmeline helps Florence emerge from her darkest time, it reminds me that we have so much to offer each other, most of all friendship.

And, of course, there’s cake … which brings me (finally!) to the purpose of this post.

I want to use this space to not only for podcast show notes, but also to share quilt patterns, interesting 1930s history (especially quilt history!), and recipes for chocolate cake. Okay, recipes for other dishes as well, but let’s start with cake, shall we? Check in on Tuesdays for my latest offerings. For now I bring you …

Ella Baker’s Blue Ribbon Chocolate Cake

(This recipe is adapted from … And Garnish with Memories: The life, Times, and recipes of a Great Cook and Raconteur by Patty Smithdeal Fulton, Overmountain Press.)

Ingredients

For the cake

  • 3 ounces baking chocolate (unsweetened), chopped
  • ¾ cup boiling water
  • ½ cup shortening
  • 1 ¾ cup sifted flour
  • 1 ½ cups sugar
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ½ tsp baking powder
  • ¾ tsp baking soda
  • 1/3 cup buttermilk (which you can make by mixing the milk with 1.5 tsp of lemon juice and refrigerating for 5 minutes)
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 eggs

For the frosting

  • 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
  • 7 Tbs milk
  • 2 Tbs butter
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 1 ½ cup sugar
  • 2 Tbs shortening
  • 1 Tbs corn syrup
  • 1 tsp vanilla

(In the original recipe, it’s suggested that one might double this recipe–I leave it up to you.)

To make the cake:

Put chocolate in a mixing bowl, pour in boiling water, and stir until chocolate is melted. (Option: combine chocolate and water and microwave for thirty seconds, stir, repeat until chocolate has melted). Add shortening and beat until melted. Let concoction cool.

In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients. Stir in chocolate, milk, vanilla and eggs, and beat until all ingredients are thoroughly combined.

Bake in two 8” pans for about thirty minutes.

When cake has cooled, spread with frosting.

To make frosting:

Place all of the ingredients except the vanilla into a sauce pan. Slowly bring to a rolling boil, stirring constantly. Let boil for one minute. Remove from heat and cool until lukewarm. Add vanilla and beat until frosting thickens.

This frosting isn’t as thick as the stuff you get from a can, just so you know. Be sure the cake is cool before you frost and the frosting is lukewarm–if either is warm, the frosting will run right down the sides. It’s still delicious if you pick it off the edge of the cake plate, don’t get me wrong, but it’s better if you can make it stick to the cake.

My family loved this cake. Between you and me, I usually make cakes from box mixes. This recipe takes a little longer to make, it’s true, but it’s really not that hard and the results are delicious.

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Notes: Friendship Album, 1933: Episode 3

Welcome back to the Quiltfiction Podcast! In this week’s episode, we present Chapters 7 and 8 of Friendship Album, 1933. If you enjoy this episode and the ones that came before it, please leave your rating and review over at iTunes. It really makes a difference! And don’t forget to subscribe!

We start out this episode with Bess enjoying a cup of Eula’s coffee, so I thought I’d share this fun coffee fact with you: In the 1930’s, 98 percent of American families were coffee drinkers, including 15 percent of children between 6 and 16 years of age and 4 percent of children under 6. I can’t imagine giving a five-year-old coffee, can you? Hard to think of anyone who needs caffeine less…

This is the episode when we finally have all five quilters in the same room and get to see whether or not they play well together. We also get to see the inside of Florence’s house and learn why, at age 27 this lively young woman is still single. Is she really destined to become another Miss Havisham, Dickens’ wealthy spinster from Great Expectations? Stay tuned to find out…

Florence’s parlor is filled with stacks of the latest needlework magazines. Popular titles from the era include House Arts, Needlecraft Magazine, and Modern Priscilla. In the name of research, I’ve collected my own piles of 1930s magazines, which not only have a lot to say about stitching, but also how to live a useful and well-decorated life. Reading these magazines, I have to remind myself that life really wasn’t simpler back in the day, it just seems that way.

Florence makes a reference to the Ladies’ Aid Society, which has come up at least once before in the story. These organizations were dedicated to caring for sick and wounded soldiers during the Civil War. Their members were sock knitters and bandage wrappers—and some eventually became nurses and hospital volunteers. They also collected money to help keep hospitals supplied. During the Great Depression, some of these groups continued their community work by fundraising for those in need. There are still Ladies Aid Societies in existence today, often attached to local churches.

I’ve gotten so many nice comments about the podcast, and many of you have said you feel inspired to make a 1930s quilt. I hope you’ll send me pictures if you do! I’m currently working on a Double Windmill quilt and hope to have the top done by the end of this week. My source for the pattern is below.

See you next week!

Frances

Notes: Friendship Album, 1933: Episode 2

In Episode 2 of Friendship Album, 1933, we round out our group of quilters with the introduction of Dorothy Johnson and Emmeline Grangerfield, and the group begins to gather together for the first time Eula’s house.

Dorothy Johnson is a mother, grandmother, master quiltmaker. She made a brief appearance in Chapter Two, where we learn that she’s Bess Wilcox’s housekeeper, but Chapter Four serves as Dorothy’s real introduction. When we meet Dorothy, she’s being dragged by Bess to the first meeting of Eula Baker’s bee. Dorothy’s not convinced she’ll be warmly received—not only is she Bess’s housekeeper, but she’s African-American. In 1930s Ohio, black and whites lived in separate communities and rarely, if ever, socialized.

For my children’s novel, Trouble the Water, I did quite a bit of research about Depression-era African-American communities in northern Kentucky, which is essentially Cincinnati, Ohio (sorry, Kentucky, but you know it’s true). This research helped me to create Dorothy’s community in Milton Falls during the same time period. In effort to learn more about African-American quiltmaking during this time, I depended upon Cuesta Benberry’s book, Always There: The African-American Presence in American Quilts, which I highly recommend. Another book that goes deep into the African-American quiltmaking traditions is Roland Freeman’s A Communion of the Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories, which also proved helpful in my research.

Emmeline Grangerfield, Florence’s sister-in-law, also makes her grand entrance in Episode 2. While I always take my characters seriously and do my best to make them as real as possible, I have to say that so far Emmeline is this story’s most comical figure (though my goal is to make her sympathetic as well). Wealthy and self-centered, Emmeline is quilting doyenne of Milton Falls, the author of “Quilt Along with Emmeline,” a weekly quilting column in the Milton Falls Gazette. Have you read any quilting columns from the ‘30s? Two of the most popular—Nancy Page and Nancy Cabot—were fictional. Like Emmeline’s column, “Nancy Page’s Quilting Club” introduced a group of imaginary quilters who became quite real in readers’ minds.

After Emmeline’s introduction, we finally get the group beginning to gather at Eula’s modest home on Hale Avenue, where a very nervous Eula serves her blue-ribbon-winning chocolate pound cake and learns she’s not the only woman to use her quilts to cover up spots on the furniture (you can add my name to that list).

Thanks for all of your kind comments and iTunes ratings and reviews! If you haven’t left a review on iTunes, but are enjoying the podcast, please consider doing so. I really appreciate everyone who has taken the time.

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Welcome to the Quiltfiction Podcast!

First Time Here?

If you haven't listened to the earlier episodes of Friendship Album, 1933, you should start from the beginning of the story!

Listen Now!

If you like quilting stories, then I’ve got some good news: The Quiltfiction Podcast is up and running! We’re going to begin with Friendship Album, 1933, a work of historical fiction by me, Frances O’Roark Dowell. Friendship Album, 1933 is not available in bookstores, in case you’re wondering, although it might be one day. Right now the only way to experience the story is via this podcast–and I really hope you’ll tune in!

Let me give a you a brief introduction. The idea for Friendship Album, 1933 came to me after reading Patchwork Souvenirs of the 1933 World Fair: The Sears National Quilt Contest and Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition by quilt historians Merikay Waldvogel and Barbara Brackman. I’ll write more about the Sears National Quilt Contest in a later post, but suffice to say that with its $1,000 grand prize (nearly $20,000 in today’s dollars), a lot of women were inspired to enter the competition.

Five such women make up Friendship Album’s circle of quilters:

Eula, whose family has been forced by hard times to leave the farm and move into town, where she doesn’t know a soul and is pretty sure she’ll never fit in…

Bess, a widow of one year, who shows up at the first meeting as a way of avoiding duty on her church’s altar guild and her neighbors’ constant condolences…

Dorothy, a woman trying hard to keep peace in her home and her sewing scissors away from the lively young grandchildren who’ve just moved in…

Then there’s the bee’s youngest member, Florence, living the life of a bored socialite after being jilted by her fiancé. Can starting her own quilt business turn her life around?

And, finally, Florence’s sister-in-law, Emmeline, who’s fresh out of material for her weekly quilting column and hopes to find inspiration in this odd collection of quilters.

When the group members hear about the Sears Quilt Competition, they all make plans to enter, although for different reasons, not all of them to do with the prize-money. In Friendship Album, 1933, we follow the characters in their own lives as well as when they gather together to sew.

Here’s a fun fact: I’m still working on the novel as the first episode drops on iTunes! This is a bit scary for me, since I’m essentially reading from a first draft and have to stay way ahead so that we don’t run out of episodes (so far so good–I’ve written close to 200 pages). But it also provides some opportunities. Maybe I’ll ask listeners for help with a street name or ideas for patterns. If a listener has feedback, she can leave it in the comments and I might end up incorporating her suggestions into a later draft.

I’m going to use this space not only to introduce new episodes and collect comments, but also to give you background on the story, share patterns and recipes, and talk a little bit about the writing process. I’d also be happy to answer questions, so feel free to ask!

Doing research has been one of the most enjoyable parts of writing Friendship Album, 1933. Not only is the 1930s a fascinating time in quilting, it’s also a wonderful period to kick around in if you’re interested in old cookbooks, graphic design, fashion, home decor, and the domestic arts. I’ve created a Friendship Album, 1933 Pinterest board, which I hope you’ll come visit (and send suggestions for!). You’ll find it on the Quiltfiction Pinterest page:

If you enjoy the first episode of Friendship Album, 1933, I hope you’ll not only subscribe via iTunes, but tell your friends about it and share the link on your social media platforms. I’ll be back next week with a new episode, so stay tuned!

Subscribe on iTunes

Notes: Friendship Album, 1933: Episode 1

Chapters 1-3: Eula, forced off the family farm by hard times, ventures into the imposing Milton Falls Library to post a notice; Bess, a widow of one year, joins the town’s newest quilting circle to avoid altar guild duty; 27-year-old Florence takes a step to escape her life as a bored socialite.

The idea for Friendship Album, 1933, came to me after reading Patchwork Souvenirs of the 1933 World Fair: The Sears National Quilt Contest and Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition by quilt historians Merikay Waldvogel and Barbara Brackman. With its $1,000 grand prize (nearly $20,000 in today’s dollars), the Sears National Quilt Contest inspired a lot of women to enter the competition.

Five such women make up Friendship Album’s circle of quilters. They all make plans to enter, although for different reasons — and not all of them to do with the prize-money.

  • Eula, whose family has been forced by hard times to leave the farm and move into town, where she doesn’t know a soul and is pretty sure she’ll never fit in…
  • Bess, a widow of one year, who shows up at the first meeting as a way of avoiding duty on her church’s altar guild and her neighbors’ constant condolences…
  • Dorothy, a woman trying hard to keep peace in her home and her sewing scissors away from the lively young grandchildren who’ve just moved in…
    Then there’s the bee’s youngest member, Florence, living the life of a bored socialite after being jilted by her fiancé. Can starting her own quilt business turn her life around?
  • And, finally, Florence’s sister-in-law, Emmeline, who’s fresh out of material for her weekly quilting column and hopes to find inspiration in this odd collection of quilters.

When I got a few hundred pages into the Friendship Album, 1933, I decided to try something new. You are witnessing the results right here — a podcast reading of the first draft of a novel as it developed, combined with blog posts highlighting the research materials supporting the writing.

I hope you enjoy this first draft of the Milton Falls, Ohio, of my imagination.

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Quilting Hints – 1931 Edition

10 Important Hints for Making Perfect Quilts–1931 Edition

One of the best things about writing a novel set in 1933 is that I get to do lots of research about Depression-era quiltmaking. Recently, I ran across this list in a 1931 catalogue, Grandmother Clark’s Old-Fashioned Quilt Designs (Book 21):

Ten Hints for Making Perfect Quilts

1. Press all material well before cutting.

2. Use blotting paper for patterns. This will save you the trouble of pinning goods to pattern.

3. Cut each piece exactly like pattern.

4. Use a sharp pair of scissors for cutting pieces

5. Match all edges perfectly when sewing together.

6. One seam sewed wrong ruins the whole block.

7. Make all the blocks for a patchwork quilt and lay them out for best color combination before sewing them all together.

8. Sew lining to frame at top and bottom. Spread frame apart for same distance at each side. Then sew lining to sides of frame.

9. For quilting use fine thread. About number 50.

10. A safety razor blade, attached to a spring clothespin, makes a handy knife for cutting threads when quilting.

 

Thanks to the Quilt Index (http://www.quiltindex.org/ephemera_full_display.php?kid=5B-AA-3)

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The Keeping Quilt–For Reals!

My friend Chris emailed today to let me know she’d seen the real Keeping Quilt that inspired Patricia Palacco’s book of the same name (which I wrote about here). Even better, she sent me a picture!

The quilt is part of a permanent exhibit of Palacco’s work at the University of Findlay’s Mazza Museum of International Art from Picture Books.

http://kinderbooks.net/wp-content/uploads/2001/05/The-Keeping-Quilt.jpg

Chris also asked if I’d read I Lay My Stitches Down: Poems of American Slavery. I haven’t, but as soon as I looked it up on Amazon I knew I wanted to read it based on the cover alone:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61-GYoRlIvL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

 

I also heard from Julie, who mentioned a book her sister wrote called Ravaging Rio and the Ghost in the Library, which is illustrated with photographs Julie took of her own quilts. I got a peek at Ravaging Rio using Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature, and I loved Julie’s quilts so much that I immediately ordered a copy.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71fAH3PZsLL.jpg

I just bought two Jennifer Chiaverini Kindle short stories, The Fabric Diary and The Runner’s Quilt. They came in November 2016, and the cost for both is only $1.99. Bargain! I’ll tell you more about them when I finish.

Speaking of short stories, I plan on posting one on this blog, serial-style, soon. I also hope to eventually make an audio version available as well, since I know so many quilters like to listen to audiobooks while they quilt.

P.S. I had a great time talking to Pat Sloan on Monday. She’s one of the quilting world’s treasures, and I so appreciate her having me on the show. If you want to listen, just head over here: http://blog.patsloan.com/2017/01/learn-about-designing-a-quilt-novels-creation-and-more-tips-a-free-pattern.html

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Quilts in Children’s Books, Part Two: The Underground Railroad Quilt Code

 

Underground Railroad Quilt CodeThe Monkey Wrench turns the Wagon Wheel toward Canada on a Bear’s Paw trail to the Crossroads. Once they got to the Crossroads, they dug a Log Cabin on the ground. Shoofly told them to dress up in cotton and satin Bow Ties and go to the cathedral church, get married and exchange Double Wedding Rings. Flying Geese stay on the Drunkard’s Path and follow the Stars.

–The Underground Railroad Quilt Code, according to Ozella Williams, reported in Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad by Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard, Ph.D.

It’s no big surprise that the Quilt Code story caught on. Slaves escaping to freedom via the Underground Railroad in the dark of night, their way mapped for them by quilts hanging on clotheslines or low-hanging branches–all the elements of a great saga are here: heroes, villains, dangerous journeys, secret knowledge, the dream of freedom.

Underground Railroad Quilt CodeGiven what a marvelous story this is, it’s also no surprise that more than one children’s book writer has latched onto it. Books that feature quilts as guides for slaves making their way north to freedom include Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad Quilt in the Sky by Faith Ringgold, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt by Deborah Hopkinson, The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroud, Under the Quilt of Dark by Deborah Hopkinson, The Secret to Freedom by Marcia Vaughan, Unspoken: A Story of the Underground Railroad by Henry Cole … and the list goes on.

One of the most beautiful (and beautifully written) of these books is Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson, which follows an African-American family through many generations, from slavery to freedom to the Civil Rights movement to the present day.

 

While Show Way is about more than the Underground Railroad Quilt Code, it relies on the idea of the code to frame the story. Given the beautiful illustrations by Hudson Talbott and the silver Newbery Honor Book sticker on the book’s cover, Show Way will perpetuate the myth of the Quilt Code for years to come.

Underground Railroad Quilt CodeIt’s hard to accept that the Quilt Code is a myth, and many people don’t. When doing research for this post, I found fairly recent YouTube videos of lectures that posited the Code as a historical truth. Amazon.com reviews of Hidden in Plain View written as recently as 2016 applaud it for what it reveals about our country’s history during slavery, even though quilt and Underground Railroad historians have been refuting the historicity of the Code since the book’s publication.

In a Time magazine article, folklorist Laurel Horton, who has done extensive research about the Quilt Code, told a reporter she had stopped trying to convince people that the code never existed. Instead she’s focused on why people continue to believe even though there is almost no historical evidence that quilts were used to guide slaves to freedom.

“This whole issue made me realize it’s not a matter of one group having the truth and another not,” Horton says in the article. “It’s matter of two different sets of beliefs. It’s made me realize that belief doesn’t have a lot to do with factual representation. People feel in their gut that it’s true so no one can convince them in their head that it’s otherwise.”

The picture books I’ve read about the Underground Railroad quilts offer compelling stories and are visually lovely. I suspect they’ll be used in elementary school classrooms for a long time to come. But as we seem to be moving ever closer to a time when facts are relative and need not be based on anything more than belief, I hope that this myth will be busted sooner rather than later.

 

For more about the Underground Railroad Quilt Code controversy, follow this link to read Leigh Fellner’s booklength investigation, Betsy Ross Redux, available as a downloadable PDF:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130120160626/http://ugrrquilt.hartcottagequilts.com/betsy%20ross%20redux.pdf

To watch Laurel Horton’s lecture at the International Quilt Study Center on the Quilt Code, just hit play:

To watch a video reading of Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLmiRkdIWI0

Underground Railroad historian Eric Giles on the UGRR Quilt Code Myth: http://www.historiccamdencounty.com/ccnews11_doc_01a.shtml