This past December, as the damp, mountain chill set in and the town of Franklin geared up for its yearly Christmas celebration A Window Wonderland, weaver and Scottish Tartans Museum volunteer Ginny McSween was feeling the pressure.

“A week before the Window Wonderland I thought, oh my goodness, I’ve got to get a tartan together,” McSween said.

The celebration, held on two special evenings along Franklin’s Main Street, features live Christmas scenes in storefront windows. McSween planned to fill the Tartans Museum’s window using herself and a loom borrowed from her weaving group, Nonah Weavers, as props and demonstrate to onlookers how to weave a traditional Scottish tartan. Franklin, like many Western North Carolina towns, is rich in Scots-Irish history, as they were some of the region’s first settlers.

McSween rustled around in the museum’s basement and found balls of yarn to use — black, red, blue and mustard yellow. But as she set up her loom and began to weave, she found that the yarn was old and brittle and kept snapping under the stress of the loom. McSween continued weaving.

“I thought no, these folks are not going to see the errors in this, so I just kept going,” she said.

Afterwards, McSween cut off a piece of the tartan and took it home to show to her husband, also a museum volunteer. From there, it seemed the tartan took on a life of its own, despite its blemishes. The Macon County Historical Society expressed interest, as did the Tartans Museum and Franklin’s Sesquicentennial Committee.

“It just went from one thing to another,” McSween said.

The tartan was chosen to become the town’s official tartan — one that any resident of the town could claim as their own — and to be placed as an artifact in a time capsule, set for burial later this year, as part of the 150-year celebration.

“I was just very very, very very pleased that they loved my tartan,” McSween said.

However, McSween couldn’t let the scrap of tartan created during Window Wonderland, with it’s broken threads and irregular pattern, be the formal piece presented to the town.

“I decided I must weave something that is proper and perfect,” McSween said.

She purchased new yarn, specially ordering the mustard color, to begin weaving the fabric that will become Franklin’s own. When it is finished, the tartan will be cut into two pieces and presented to the town’s historical organizations. And one swatch will make its way to Scotland, for registry in the International Tartan Index.

The index is an academic listing of tartans throughout history. Anyone researching a tartan may look through this database and find when a tartan was made, who designed it, who wore it and what kind of pattern it bears, said Matthew Newsome, Curator and General Manager of the Scottish Tartans Museum in Franklin.

However, it is not the registry process that makes a tartan official — it is the commissioning clan’s acceptance of a tartan. When Franklin town officials unanimously approved the acceptance of McSween’s tartan as their own this month, the tartan’s history was etched into the books.

“That makes it the official Franklin tartan,” Newsome said.

The tartan will be used at the museum for graphical promotions, such as on its Web site, and a sample of McSween’s work will be on display. Newsome said he would also like to see the tartan become a part of Franklin’s daily fabric of life, with local weavers volunteering to lend their skills to shawls and ties made from the tartan’s pattern.