Threads of Resistance: Quilting Freedom Along the Underground Railroad

by Alyssa Nolan

John Fleming Award in Decorative Arts Writing

The CSDA/CCAD presented Alyssa Nolan with the 2025 John Fleming Award in Decorative Arts Writing. This annual, $1,000 juried award recognizes an exceptional example of original magazine writing on decorative arts in Canada from an emerging author. For more information on John Fleming and the Award go to: https://csda-ccad.org/Awards.

Fig. 1. Traditional Underground Railroad quilt patterns of Log Cabin, Flying Geese, and Monkey Wrench. Quilt details, United States, c. 1870-1880. Photos: Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

QUILTS IN AFRICAN CANADIAN and African American communities appear to be ordinary domestic objects: warm, well-loved, decorative. However, when hung on windowsills, fences, or clotheslines in the early to mid-19th century, their pieced-together beauty may have carried hidden meanings. According to oral traditions and legends, quilts displayed coded messages to guide enslaved people on their path to freedom through the Underground Railroad. Patterns like Log Cabin, Flying Geese, and Monkey Wrench took on layered meanings: safety, direction, and survival (fig. 1). Although the historical evidence for these uses is tenuous, the symbolic and cultural memory of such coded quilts is strong.

For generations, Black communities across Canada turned to quilting not just as a domestic craft but as a powerful means of storytelling and resistance. In the context of

the Underground Railroad, stories passed down orally suggest that quilts were often more than just bedcovers. They may have been signals, maps, or quiet prayers sewn into fabric, guiding enslaved people on their path to freedom. It is important to understand how these stories and stitches preserve a legacy of courage, creativity, and resilience.

Coded Messages in Cloth: Fact or Folklore?

The 1999 book Hidden in Plain View by Jaqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard presented the idea that enslaved communities used quilts as a clandestine communication system (fig. 2). According to this theory, specific patterns conveyed critical information. For example, the Monkey Wrench pattern meant “get the resources you’ll need to make shelter,” “find your way,” or “protect yourself during the journey;” the Log Cabin signaled a safe house; and the Flying Geese motif indicated the direction north. Women hung quilts outside homes to discreetly guide escapees on the Underground Railroad.

This narrative quickly captivated the public imagination. Quilt pattern codes began appearing in school textbooks and museum exhibits, and oral traditions within Black families gained renewed visibility. As noted by Folklife magazine, these stories are not just about fabric and thread; they are about trust, memory, and survival. The stories, however, sometimes cite specific quilt patterns that did not yet exist during the peak years of the Underground Railroad. The tension between oral history and written evidence lies at the heart of this debate. Critics worry that romanticizing the past without firm proof risks distorting history.

Yet defenders of the codes, like quilter Sharon Tindall, believe that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. She argues that secrecy was critical: at the time, wider knowledge of these codes would have threatened lives. Tindall’s quilts (fig. 3), including those displayed

at the historic Johnson House in Philadelphia, serve as both commemorative objects and modern expressions of ancestral resilience. For Tindall, quilting is a spiritual practice, a form of protest, and a way to pass down the truth of faith-stitched memory.

The Secret Codes: Stitching Memory and Meaning

In the Canadian context, The Secret Codes exhibition, which toured nationally from 2022-2024, brings these conversations into the present with powerful clarity. Curated by multi-disciplinary artist David Woods and organized by the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia (BANNS), a group founded by Woods in 1992, the show highlights the unique quilting

traditions of African Nova Scotian communities. Woods initially searched these neighbourhoods for paintings and carvings, but an elder prompted him to consider quilts as art by pointing out, “That’s what the women did.” Woods came to see quilting as a universal and deeply gendered art form in Black Nova Scotian communities. His documentation became unintentionally archival: many quilters passed away within a decade of his interviews, and their work might otherwise have been lost. The exhibition included works by over 25 quiltmakers, including Myla Borden, Heather Cromwell, and Marlene Dorrington, whose quilts carry not only aesthetic value but also deep social meaning.

These quilts draw from patterns associated with the Underground Railroad as well as incorporate imagery and stories rooted in local experience. For example, many pieces reinterpret the Flying Geese or Log Cabin motifs with colours and compositions unique to Nova Scotian landscapes and family narratives. Woods collected oral histories, photographs, and stories during his travels across the province, and some of his sketches became quilt templates (fig. 4). These works are more than textiles; they are stitched oral histories, visual storytelling, and living memory.

Fig. 4 (left). Heather Cromwell (quilt top) and Mary MacLean (quilt), design by David Woods, Betty Hartley #1, 2012. Pieced, appliquéd, and hand stitched, 175 × 221 cm. Photo: Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia (BANNS).

Fig. 5 (right). Melinda Clayton Patterson, Go North quilt, 2022. Photo: Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia (BANNS).

A standout piece, It Takes Four, is a collaborative quilt created by Heather Cromwell. Inspired by the codes associated with Underground Railroad quilts, Cromwell involved hergranddaughter in designing the piece, her mother contributed hand quilting, and her son sewed the label. This multigenerational effort not only visually nods to historical symbols but also embeds lived family experiences, making the quilt a tactile expression of continuity, identity, and care.

Another incredible artist, Melinda Clayton-Patterson, learned to quilt as a child in East Preston, Nova Scotia. Although she set it aside in adolescence, quilting returned to her as a creative and cultural calling in adulthood. In her words, quilting is “about passing on the family tradition to another generation.” Her piece Go North (fig. 5), displayed in national exhibitions and at emancipation events, is a modern take on the Flying Geese pattern. Clayton-Patterson also leads workshops that take participants on a symbolic walk through the Underground Railroad, using quilting to connect artistic practice with historical education.

While African Nova Scotian quilting traditions have garnered growing recognition, similar histories of resilience and cultural preservation exist in other parts of Canada. In Southern Ontario, particularly in the historic village of North Buxton, once part of the Elgin Settlement established for formerly enslaved Black Americans, quilting emerged as a deeply communal and intergenerational practice. Women who escaped slavery brought with them not only the technical skill of quilt-making but also the emotional and cultural weight of their experiences. Quilting bees became spaces of both social support and cultural continuity, where women passed down stories of survival alongside fabric scraps. Signature quilts like the Busy Bee quilt (fig. 6) or memorial works like The Tree of Life (fig. 7) testify to quilting’s role in preserving memory and community pride. These textiles are more than utilitarian objects; they are visual testaments to collective identity, historical endurance, and the ongoing effort to stitch the past into the present.

Quilts as Archive, Protest, and Prayer

To call these quilts archives is to recognize their function as repositories of Black experience. They document migration, memory, motherhood, spirituality, and survival. They record not only what happened but also what must not be forgotten. In this way, quilting has long served as both a personal ritual and a political act. For many women, particularly those historically denied access to formal education, quilting offered, and still offers, a means to write oneself into history.

Quilting also offers a way to engage with grief and generational trauma. As with many oral traditions, the act of quilting allows for non-verbal expression, a way to mourn, protest, remember, and imagine. In the African Nova Scotian context, these quilts are both a cultural anchor and a mode of resistance. They preserve ancestral stories and symbols that might otherwise be lost, carrying forward traditions that bind communities together across generations. At the same time, their very visibility challenges dominant historical narratives that often silenced or excluded Black voices. By placing these works in public and community spaces, quilts assert presence, resilience, and identity in the face of systemic erasure. For example, Clayton-Patterson uses quilts exhibited at places like the Manitoba Museum and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights as entry points into conversations about slavery, resilience, and liberation. Her educational efforts reflect how quilts can move from private ritual to public pedagogy.

Conclusion: Truth in the Threads

Quilts made by and for Black communities during the time of the Underground Railroad were never just quilts. Whether or not they contain codes, they served as protective talismans and emblems of community strength. They were, and remain, artifacts of cultural resistance. As exhibitions like The Secret Codes and voices like Sharon Tindall’s remind us, truth is not always found in footnotes. It can also be felt in fabric. It can be believed, preserved, and passed down through generations who recognize the value of sewn stories.

These textile traditions do not just preserve history, they activate it. In schools, museums, and community workshops, quilts are tactile tools for education and remembrance.

Contemporary artists and descendants of those who perhaps once stitched secret codes now use quilting to reclaim narratives and reframe national memory. Through fabric, they engage in quiet but powerful acts of cultural authorship, challenging whose stories are told and how. Whether through workshops or exhibitions that spotlight overlooked voices, quilting remains a living form of resistance, one that threads past injustices into present

conversations about equity.

As Michael Polanyi famously observed in The Tacit Dimension, “I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell.” This succinct assertion encapsulates the idea that belief and knowledge often reside beyond the boundaries of formal articulation or empirical verification. Rather than the product solely of measurable observation, belief is rooted in personal, experiential understanding that defies simple explanation. These quilts are a testimony to that knowing. They may not be provable fact, but they are undeniably true.

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Alyssa Nolan is a Master’s student in Psychology at Carleton University, Ottawa. Her academic work explores human connection and loneliness, but she is drawn to the decorative arts as a space for storytelling. Growing up surrounded by her Polish great-grandmother’s textiles, she developed an appreciation for the handmade. Nolan hopes to bring together her personal interests and academic work to explore how everyday objects reflect our shared humanity.

This article appears in the Spring/Summer 2026 issue of Ornamentum magazine. To purchase the issue or subscribe, head to our store.