Frankie Welch (1924-2021) combined a creative mind and an entrepreneurial spirit to establish herself as a leading American textile, accessories, and fashion designer in a career that spanned four decades, from the 1960s through the 1990s. This lavishly illustrated book provides a lively account of her life and career, tracing her rise from the small town of Rome, Georgia, to her role as a doyenne of fashion in the Washington, D.C., area. Featuring her scarf and fashion designs for the 1968 presidential campaigns, the history of her influential dress shop in Alexandria, Virginia, her connections to first ladies and other D.C. tastemakers, and her exuberant embrace of Americana during the U.S. Bicentennial, this history weaves Welch's personal biography into the literal fabric of our country. Frankie Welch's Americana discusses significant designs and their creation, use, and influence in detail, while highlighting how Welch embraced and promoted her role as an entrepreneur, building a niche business that capitalized on her location near Washington and her political connections. Welch was most widely known for her custom scarves, and each design offers an opportunity for readers to view the nation's recent past through the informative lens of women's fashion. Welch designed thousands of scarves for many clients, including Betty Ford, Furman University, McDonald's, the National Press Club, the Hubert Humphrey presidential campaign, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Garden Club of Georgia. Concise and well researched, Frankie Welch's Americana is the first book to document the ambition and accomplishments of one of the South's most prominent fashion authorities of the second half of the twentieth century.

Southern Tufts is the first book to highlight the garments produced by northwestern Georgia's tufted textile industry. Though best known now for its production of carpet, in the early twentieth century the region was revered for its handtufted candlewick bedspreads, products that grew out of the Southern Appalachian Craft Revival and appealed to the vogue for Colonial Revival-style household goods. Soon after the bedspreads became popular, enterprising women began creating hand-tufted garments, including candlewick kimonos in the 1920s and candlewick dresses in the early 1930s. By the late 1930s, large companies offered machine-produced chenille beach capes, jackets, and robes. In the 1940s and 1950s, chenille robes became an American fashion staple. At the end of the century, interest in chenille fashion revived, fueled by nostalgia and an interest in recycling vintage materials. Chenille bedspreads, bathrobes, and accessories hung for sale both in roadside souvenir shops, especially along the Dixie Highway, and in department stores all over the nation. Callahan tells the story of chenille fashion and its connections to stylistic trends, automobile tourism, industrial developments, and U.S. history. The well-researched and heavily illustrated text presents a broad history of tufted textiles, as well as sections highlighting individual craftspeople and manufacturers involved with the production of chenille fashion.