Month 9 brings us to the star block. The sawtooth star is also known as the evening star, variable star and North star. Sailors have been navigating by way of the stars since the beginning. So it is understandable that the slaves were told to follow the stars, the North Star, to lead them to freedom.
The north star is the final block in the underground railroad quilt code. However, in the book Hidden in Plain View, it is not the last. There were several “secondary” quilt blocks whose patterns were also memorized by escaping slaves. We will include another three of those secondary blocks in our series to complete our sampler. (NOTE: I had the blocks out of order, next month will be the Flying Geese block)
Ozella’s Underground Railroad Quilt Code:
The 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 stain bowties 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.
