Speaking & Visits 

Best for: Libraries, museums, historical societies, civic and community organizations, business groups, and students in grades four and above. Each presentation is tailored to its audience. 

Rachel traces Catherine Evans Whitener’s journey from a dogtrot log cabin in Reo, Georgia, to the first bedspread she tufted at fifteen using flour-sack cloth, hand-spun yarn, and a borrowed bodkin needle. 

From that small beginning, the story expands to include the women who built a porch-based cottage industry, the roadside stands of Peacock Alley, and Dalton’s transformation from the Bedspread Center of the World to the Carpet Capital of the World. Rachel explores the stitches, patterns, people, tools, and ideas that helped shape the economy and identity of an entire region, while sharing discoveries from her research that could not fit within the pages of TUFTED. 

Why Recording Your Stories, Your Family’s Stories, and Your Community’s Stories Matters Best for: Community groups, women’s groups, book clubs, libraries, historical societies, and genealogy groups. 

A warm, reflective talk about the power of place-based storytelling, family memory, and the “yarns” passed from one generation to the next. Rachel discusses why recording your own stories—and the stories of your parents, grandparents, neighbors, and community—matters before those memories are lost. 

Using TUFTED as a starting point, Rachel explores how ordinary recollections, family photographs, kitchen-table conversations, local legends, handmade objects, and passed-down memories can preserve a much larger history. She invites audiences to consider the histories they carry and the simple steps they can take to become history keepers. 

Inside the Long, Unlikely, and Deeply Personal Making of TUFTED Best for: Writers, book clubs, women’s groups, leadership groups, creative groups, and community organizations. 

A candid, humorous, behind-the-scenes talk about what it took to bring TUFTED from idea to finished book. Rachel shares the winding journey of research, writing, revision, illustration, design, printing, fundraising, community partnerships, decision fatigue, unexpected problems, and small miracles that shaped the project. 

The program also includes the personal learning curves behind the public work: beginning again in a new season of life, learning to share creative work before feeling completely ready, becoming visible online, and discovering that courage often looks less like confidence than simply continuing. 

Part publishing journey, part local-history love letter, part creative coming-of-age story, and part “mostly true saga,” this talk reveals the hidden labor beneath a beautifully finished book. It is ideal for audiences interested in creativity, reinvention, publishing, courage, and the long, messy, worthwhile process of making something meaningful. 

How the Art of TUFTED Came Together with Katie Hickey Best for: Art groups, schools, libraries, book clubs, educators, creative groups, and visual-arts programs. 

A highly visual, behind-the-scenes talk about how TUFTED became a fully illustrated picture book through research, art direction, collaboration, revision, book design, and Katie Hickey’s illustrations. Rachel shares character sketches, early roughs, reference photographs, art-direction notes, design challenges, and the many decisions that shaped the finished book. 

The program shows how illustrations do far more than decorate a story. In a nonfiction picture book, art builds the world, deepens the history, carries emotion, reveals character, clarifies time and place, and helps young readers enter a past they never experienced. 

Rachel also discusses what happened after the art was finished, including book design, production files, promotional needs, and the work of adapting illustrations for launch materials, social media, standees, postcards, event signage, and community presentations. The result is a celebration of creative collaboration, visual storytelling, problem-solving, and the long road from first sketch to final page. 

How History Becomes a Picture Book Best for: Schools, libraries, educators, book clubs, and community groups. 

A behind-the-scenes look at how TUFTED came to life, from research and writing to illustration, design, printing, and publication. Rachel walks audiences through the process of turning a true local history into a nonfiction picture book for young readers. 

The program explains how a picture book is built layer by layer: finding the heart of the story, deciding what to include and leave out, writing for children without oversimplifying the truth, collaborating with an illustrator, revising text, choosing page turns, balancing facts with emotion, and making design decisions that support the story. 

Unlike As the Pages Turn, which focuses on Rachel’s personal publishing journey, or From Sketch to Story, which concentrates on art and illustration, Stitch by Stitch, Story by Story offers a broader view of the complete bookmaking process. 

Catherine Evans Whitener and the Women Who Built an Industry Best for: Women’s groups, leadership groups, civic groups, historical societies, and business organizations. 

A women’s entrepreneurship presentation about Catherine Evans Whitener and the generations of women whose skill, labor, creativity, and persistence helped build Dalton’s chenille bedspread industry. 

Before Dalton became the Bedspread Center of the World, the work began on porches, in kitchens, and in small homes. Women’s eyes, hands, minds, and backs carried the labor that turned a cottage craft into a regional economic force. Rachel honors those women not as background figures, but as central participants in the making of an industry. 

The program explores women’s work, overlooked leadership, creative problem-solving, informal entrepreneurship, and the complicated beauty of a history built through both opportunity and hard labor. 

TUFTED offers many ways into learning, and no two groups need exactly the same program. Rachel works with teachers and librarians to shape each visit around their students’ ages, interests, curriculum, schedule, and learning goals. 

Programs are especially well suited to grades two through six. Read-aloud visits can be adapted for younger children, while older students can explore the history, writing, entrepreneurship, economics, illustration, research, and making of the book in greater depth. 

A lively shared reading of TUFTED with conversation, picture study, vocabulary, audience participation, and time for student questions. The program can be adapted for younger elementary listeners or used as the opening to a deeper discussion with older students. 

A student-friendly presentation about how one girl’s hand-tufted bedspread became part of a much larger story of creativity, work, industry, and community. Students explore how curiosity and persistence can turn one small idea into something larger. 

A closer look at the science, design, tools, materials, patterns, measurement, problem-solving, and innovation behind hand-tufted bedspreads—and the industry that followed. Students are invited to consider the problem Catherine solved and how makers think. 

A behind-the-scenes program about research, writing, revision, illustration, history, and how a true story becomes a published picture book. Rachel may share research materials, sketches, page planning, and production decisions appropriate to the group. 

An interactive literacy program about what good books grow: vocabulary, curiosity, attention, empathy, background knowledge, visual literacy, and better questions. This program may be adapted for students, families, teachers, or librarians.