In the 1999 book, the authors decode the 10 patterns that make up the Underground Railroad Quilt Codes. The first pattern Edmunds learned to make — the one she read about in the magazine decades ago — ...

Edith Edmunds, 99, pictured with one of her completed Underground Railroad Code quilts. For Edith Edmunds, the art of quilt making is inextricably linked to the Black struggle for freedom.

Quilters have been copying patterns believed to have been used as signals for the Underground Railroad even though historians say they can't find any evidence they were used that way.

The Underground Railroad quilt is a story about a set of quilt blocks that could have helped enslaved people escape during slavery. The idea took off 25 years ago with the book, " Hidden in Plain ...