Why Dalton, Georgia?  The industry began in a simple way, around the turn of the century. A young Dalton woman, Catherine Evans Whitener, recreated a bedspread in a hand-crafted pattern she had seen, for a wedding gift. Copying a quilt pattern, she sewed thick cotton yarns with a running stitch into unbleached muslin, clipped the ends of the yarn so they would fluff out, and finally, washed the spread in hot water to hold the yarns in by shrinking the fabric. Interest grew in young Catherine's bedspreads, and in 1900, she made the first sale of a spread for $2.50. Demand became so great for the spreads that by the 1930s, local women, who were real entrepreneurs, had "haulers," who would take the stamped sheeting and yarns to front porch workers. Often, entire families worked to hand tuft the spreads for 10 to 25 cents per spread. The local term for the sewing process was "turfin" for the nearly 10,000 area cottage tufters -- men, women, and children. Bedspread income was instrumental in helping many area families survive the depression.  And that’s part of the story of how we became The Carpet Capitol of the World, and still today why our small town manufactures most of the carpet installed all over the world.   Read more here...https://daltoncarpet.com/info-center/carpet/History-of-Carpet