Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild

10/09/2026

This is perfectly reasonable

10/09/2026

☔📚 RAINY SATURDAY? WE'VE GOT THE PERFECT PLAN! 🧶🎨

A little rain isn't going to stop the stories, creativity, or fun!

What better way to spend a rainy Saturday than indoors, surrounded by books, fascinating stories, beautiful quilts, handwoven textiles, and talented local artists?

The Acworth Book & Storytelling Festival is happening TOMORROW, Saturday, October 10, and it's INDOORS!

📍 Tanyard Creek Overlook – Acworth Community Center
4361 Cherokee Street, Acworth, GA 30101

🕙 10 AM – 3 PM
🎟️ FREE admission and parking!

Come explore a wonderful day featuring more than 40 local and regional authors, book signings, professional storytellers, guest speakers, quilt displays, and vendors!

🧶 The Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild will be there too! We'll have beautiful handwoven creations and merchandise for sale, along with live weaving and spinning demonstrations.

🎤 Our very own Guild member Joy Patterson will be speaking about weaving sometime between noon and 12:45 PM.

Bring a friend, bring the family, and spend a few hours enjoying books, stories, art, and creativity.

☔ Let it rain outside. We'll be weaving stories inside!

We hope to see you there!

Send a message to learn more

10/09/2026

10/09/2026

Here’s the link to sign up for our November 7 field trip to the farm. https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0E4CA9AE2CA4FDC16-66558472-

10/09/2026

🧵 WOVEN HISTORY — PART 4: THE STORIES LEFT BEHIND

After spending the week going down the coverlet rabbit hole, this may be my favorite part.

Some old coverlets don't just give us beautiful patterns.

They give us names. Dates. Places. People.

Professional weavers sometimes wove identifying information directly into a coverlet—perhaps the owner's name, the weaver's name, the year, or the place where it was made.

Suddenly, you're not simply looking at an old piece of cloth.

You're looking at something made nearly 200 years ago for a real person, in a real community, by someone whose skill can still be seen in every thread.

And then many of these textiles became family possessions—used, treasured, handed down and eventually preserved in museum collections.

That's what I love about textile history.

Cloth can tell us things that weren't written in a history book.

You just have to know where to look.

🧶 Every thread has a story. Sometimes, we're lucky enough to know whose story it was.

That's the end of my coverlet rabbit hole…but I've already fallen into another one.

🏰 Next week: castles, tapestries, and something I thought I knew—but didn't.

— Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild

📷 Historic coverlet images from museum collections. Public Domain/CC0. Individual museum and object credits included with each image.

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Picture 1 — Mary Keator Coverlet, 1829
Made for Mary Keator, Roxbury, New York. Her name is woven directly into the coverlet. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.
Picture 2 — Harry Tyler Coverlet, 1839
Woven by professional weaver Harry Tyler in Jefferson County, New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.
Picture 3 — another signed/dated coverlet

10/08/2026

🧶 TWO DAYS, TWO GREAT EVENTS! COME SEE US! 🎉

Don't forget! The Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild is heading to Acworth and Woodstock this weekend, and we'd love to see you!

📚 SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10 – ACWORTH BOOK & STORYTELLING FESTIVAL

📍 Tanyard Creek Overlook, 4361 Cherokee Street, Acworth, GA 30101

🕙 10 AM – 3 PM

We'll be demonstrating weaving and spinning, displaying beautiful textiles, and selling handwoven creations and other merchandise!

🎤 Guild member Joy Patterson will also be speaking about weaving sometime between 12:00 and 12:45 PM. Be sure to stop by!

🎨 SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11 – REEVES HOUSE, WOODSTOCK

📍 734 Reeves Street, Woodstock, GA 30188

🕝 2:30 – 4:30 PM

Join us for more live weaving and spinning demonstrations! We'll also have beautiful handwoven items and merchandise available for purchase.

10/08/2026

🧵 WOVEN HISTORY — PART 3: HOW DID THEY ACTUALLY WEAVE THESE?

After looking at these beautiful old coverlets, I started wondering about something much more basic:

How did they actually make something big enough to cover a bed?

And down another little rabbit hole I went.

Many early overshot coverlets were woven in long, relatively narrow panels. The panels were then cut and carefully seamed together to create the width needed for the finished bedcovering.

Look closely at some surviving coverlets and you can actually find that center seam.

Overshot itself is fascinating. A ground cloth is woven while an additional pattern weft “shoots over” portions of the ground, creating those wonderful geometric designs.

And some of these patterns had equally wonderful names—Double Bowknot, Chariot Wheel, Governor’s Garden and Tennessee Trouble.

Later, professional weavers could create increasingly elaborate figured and double-cloth coverlets, some using Jacquard attachments on hand looms.

Different looms. Different structures. Different weavers.

All producing something that had to be both useful and beautiful.

Tomorrow: one last trip down the coverlet rabbit hole—the names, dates and family stories woven into the cloth.

— Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild
Photo 1: I love the little geometric designs and the beautiful blue and cream colors.

Photo 2: An overshot coverlet featuring Double Bowknot and Window Sash patterns. Look at all that detail!

Photo 3: Another beautiful example of geometric weaving. Notice the different patterns working together.

📷 Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History.

10/07/2026

🧵 WOVEN HISTORY — PART 2: WHEN COVERLETS BECAME PICTURES

Yesterday we introduced the American coverlet. Today, take a closer look at what happened as weaving became increasingly sophisticated.

By the 1830s and 1840s, professional weavers were creating remarkably detailed coverlets. With specialized looms and Jacquard attachments, designs could include flowers, stars, houses, trees, birds, eagles—and even lions.

Some coverlets also included names, dates and places woven directly into the cloth.

Look closely at these examples. These aren't printed designs. They were woven.

One particularly fascinating weaver was Harry Tyler of New York. His early coverlets featured a lion in the corner blocks. By the mid-1840s, the lion was replaced by a distinctly American symbol—the eagle.

Another professional weaver, Peter Leisey of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, created elaborate coverlets featuring roses, oak leaves, acorns, houses, palm trees and grapevines.

These weren't simply warm bedcoverings.

They were demonstrations of extraordinary weaving skill—and nearly 200 years later, we can still study the hands, technology and traditions that created them.

🧶 History isn't only written. Sometimes, it's woven.

— Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild

📷 Historic images courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

• Coverlet, Harry Tyler, 1839. Wool and cotton. Jefferson County, New York.

• Coverlet, 1833. Unknown maker. Cotton and wool, double cloth, woven on a hand loom with a Jacquard attachment. Probably New York.

• Coverlet, Peter Leisey, ca. 1838–40. Wool and cotton, Biederwand weave, woven on a hand loom with a Jacquard attachment. Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

10/07/2026

🧵 WOVEN HISTORY: WHAT IS A COVERLET?

Before mass-produced blankets filled our homes, American weavers were creating extraordinary bedcoverings one thread at a time.

A coverlet is a woven bedcovering, and surviving examples give us a remarkable glimpse into the skill, creativity and lives of earlier American weavers.

This beautiful example was made in 1829 for Mary Keator of Roxbury, New York. Woven of wool and cotton in double cloth, it contains floral medallions, eagles, stars, buildings and other tiny figures. Mary Keator's name was actually woven into the coverlet.

Historic coverlets weren't simply useful household objects. Their patterns, materials, names and dates can help tell us about the people and communities that made and owned them.

Nearly 200 years later, the threads are still telling their story.

Look closely. History is woven into the cloth.

— Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild

📷 Image: Coverlet, 1829. Unknown weaver. Made for Mary Keator. Wool and cotton, double cloth. Gift of Bruce M. Tompkins, 2021. Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.