Carolina Snowflakes
For over 30 years, Carolina Snowflakes have hung on Christmas trees, windows, and walls all over the world. The Snowflakes started with a failed design.
I began my basket making career in 1983 in New Bern, North Carolina. There, I often demonstrated weaving at Tryon Palace. In 1984, when I tried to create a four-leaf clover during a demonstration but it looked incomplete. I then connected two of them and created an eight-point object and called the design a Carolina Snowflake. The Palace bought over 300 of them that year to hang in the windows at the Palace complex and to sell through their gift shop.
Later, I wrote a pattern booklet for the Carolina Snowflake which I copyrighted (VA 219 131) and later copyrighted the design itself (VA 536 810).
The pattern booklet is available for sale on the Books page.
Carolina Snowflake Milestones
In 1993, as part of the Year of Craft in America, I was invited to be an artist of the White House Christmas tree with the Carolina Snowflakes.- In March of 1998, QVC featured me with the Carolina Snowflakes on “Quest for America’s Best – 50 state tour”. The show aired live nationwide on Easter weekend. I took a Christmas tree from the tree farm next door, along the interstate to Charlotte, to hang the snowflakes on…on Easter weekend. Eleven hundred were sold in a matter of minutes.
- Again in 1998, I was an invited artist of the White House Christmas tree with the Carolina Snowflakes. I was actually invited to the White House for an artists’ reception.
- Our State Magazine has sold them through the Our State Store (2003-2004).
- In 2006 my Carolina Snowflakes decorated two White House Christmas trees. PBS, HGTV, USA Today and numerous other newspapers covered that event. Besides QVC, that was the largest media coverage they received. See the HGTV special here.
- The Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery has sold them in their museum shop as well as the North Carolina Museum of History.