Joanna’s Freedom

The Lost Quilter continues the story of a character introduced in The Runaway Quilt—Joanna, a fugitive slave who traveled by the Underground Railroad to reach safe haven at Elm Creek Farm in 1859. Many years later at a historical museum on Edisto Island, Sylvia discovers important clues about Joanna’s life, the most important of which is an antique quilt made by a South Carolina woman known as Joanna North. Examining the quilt, a Courthouse Steps variation with an outer border of Birds in the Air blocks, Sylvia discovers fabrics identical to those in the Runaway Quilt made by the runaway slave who had sought refuge at Elm Creek Farm, proving that the two Joannas were one and the same. My mother, Geraldine Neidenbach, and my sister, Heather Neidenbach, collaborated on this lovely reproduction of Joanna’s quilt—“Joanna’s Freedom” — using fabrics from my “Elm Creek Quilts: Gerda’s Collection” fabric line from Red Rooster.