Weaving Drafts: Federal City  This watercolor drawdown and its
associated draft, dating to the late 1800s/early 1900s,
illustrate the coverlet pattern known as Federal City. To record
a pattern, a weaver creates a draft and/or a drawdown. A draft
looks much like a strip of musical notation; a drawdown is a
visual grid that illustrates a single weaving block. This
drawdown was made by Frances Louisa Goodrich (1856-1944), who
recorded weaving patterns she collected in and around Asheville,
North Carolina. The use of graph paper indicates that this
pattern was drawn later in her life, likely between 1920 and
1940. Goodrich collected two drafts of this pattern, which she
pasted into a notebook. The draft is labeled "from Ky. through
C.C. Angel." The Angel family, who lived in the Paint Fork of
Ivy, NC, helped Goodrich interpret local weaving traditions. A
second draft, pasted under the first, was from Olive Dame
Campbell. The two draft strips demonstrate how an older pattern
written with hatch marks was updated u