“A Southern Gentlewoman . . . who captured beauty from everything around her and wove it into the tapestry of her life.”
Anne Champ Orr: 1875 – 1946 was born in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1913, at a time when few women ever thought about a career, she began hers as an art editor for a woman’s Magazine.
Several publishers and thread manufactures such as Coats, American Thread Company, and Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens were quick to recognize her talents - she even self-published for a while – so her high degree of technical skill, imagination and versatility were preserved for future generations.
As a champion of the needle arts she wrote many articles in some of the leading magazines of the day, and her entrepreneurship has made her patterns and designs available to hundreds of thousands of women.
Her life spanned the period of greatest achievement for women, and for needle workers she laid the foundation for us today. She brought a legacy of grace and style to the early 20th Century, and to lives of many women - That nostalgia lives on today.
Through the gracious Edwardian era, to the flapper period of the roaring twenties, on up to beyond the 2nd world war her designs inspired and allowed women to create adornments for themselves and their homes and to simply make their own pretty or useful things. She provided a variety of needlework alphabets, designs for children’s clothing, fancy table accessories, and lingerie; everything she produced was and still is pefectly adaptable to any use.
Here at Heirloom Crochet we love her most for her skill in all the various forms of crochet - but she was also a master at creating patterns and designs for all kinds of needlework, including tatting, embroidery and quilting.
One of the most prolific designers of her time, she knew how to provide the most appealing patterns with easy-to-follow instructions that are just as easy to follow today and are just as inspiring as ever.
She produced 100 needlework and crochet books with easy to follow instructions, photographs and diagrams covering everything from bedspreads, doilies, baby items, medallions, delicate lace edgings, and assorted floral and pictorial motifs.
Also many baby crochet patterns. She was fond of flowers and baskets and used them for inspiration in many of her wonderful designs that are as fresh today as they were nearly a hundred years ago.

For lovers of crochet, there can be nothing more enjoyable than using one of Anne Orr’s exquisite and timeless designs to create our very own Heirloom.

Heirloom Crochet owns the entire inventory of Anne Orr's crochet and tatting books, and will make all of them available on CD in the near future.