Patreon for Tlingit button blanket creators: formline design vocabulary, HBC trade wool, abalone button history, appliqué construction, crest ownership, potlatch protocol, and the Apple Tax on Native American iOS audiences
The button blanket sits at the ceremonial center of Tlingit, Tsimshian, Haida, and related Northwest Coast societies as a portable crest display worn at potlatches, naming ceremonies, ku.éex’ memorials, and other high-protocol occasions where the right to display a hereditary crest must be publicly witnessed and affirmed. Its canonical form is a Hudson’s Bay Company trade wool blanket — navy blue in the majority of historical examples, occasionally red or black — used as the backing onto which appliquéd panels of red or black melton wool are stitched in the vocabulary of Northwest Coast formline design, with abalone shell buttons outlining the formline shapes and creating a shimmering, iridescent crest boundary visible across the full width of a longhouse or dance floor. The button blanket is a post-Contact development: it emerged in the early nineteenth century as maritime fur trade commerce made glass and abalone buttons and HBC trade wool blankets broadly accessible on the Northwest Coast, but it was not a break from earlier visual tradition — it adopted exactly the formline grammar that governed all high-prestige Northwest Coast art across every medium, from totem poles to Chilkat blankets to engraved coppers, and it adopted exactly the crest ownership system that had always governed who could make and wear what. Patreon has become a meaningful revenue and documentation platform for makers and cultural educators in this tradition. The Native American urban diaspora communities concentrated in Seattle, Portland, Eugene, Anchorage, Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka, Vancouver, Victoria, and Prince Rupert show iOS device adoption in the 62–74% range. That concentration means that from November 1, 2026, when Apple’s 30% iOS commission on Patreon subscriptions takes full effect, a disproportionate share of every dollar a Tlingit button blanket creator earns through Patreon on mobile gets routed through Apple before it reaches the artist.
Post-Contact origin of the button blanket: maritime trade, wool access, and the 1820s–1850s emergence
The button blanket cannot have predated the access conditions that made its distinctive materials available. Two key trade goods had to become sufficiently common on the Northwest Coast before the form could emerge: factory-woven wool blankets of appropriate weight and size, and buttons of glass, shell, or metal in commercial quantities. Both arrived through the maritime fur trade that expanded dramatically from the 1790s onward, as Spanish, British, American, and Russian trading vessels made regular seasonal appearances at Northwest Coast ports from Sitka south to the Columbia River.
The Hudson’s Bay Company, which achieved effective trade dominance on the Northwest Coast after the merger with the North West Company in 1821, standardized the wool trade blanket as its primary exchange currency in the region. By the 1820s and 1830s, HBC point blankets manufactured at mills in Witney, Oxfordshire, and in the broader West of England woolen district were being traded in large quantities at Fort Vancouver, Fort Simpson (Port Simpson), Fort Langley, and Fort Stikine. The button blanket tradition was visible to outside observers by the 1850s–1860s at the latest: ethnographers and collectors active in Southeast Alaska and coastal British Columbia during those decades documented and collected examples, and the photographic record beginning in the late 1870s shows button blankets already fully developed as a recognized regalia form. The best current estimate for the emergence window is approximately 1820–1850, with glass buttons in use first (imported glass buttons from Bohemian manufacturers were present in Northwest Coast trade networks by the 1830s) and abalone buttons entering widespread use as a source-stable commercial product by the 1870s–1880s when California commercial abalone harvest began to generate reliable quantities of worked shell.
The button blanket did not replace the older Chilkat blanket or the even older Raven’s Tail blanket — it supplemented them as a new medium for crest display. The Chilkat blanket, woven in mountain goat wool and cedar bark weft on a vertical suspended warp, required specialized training and months of labor per piece; only certain Northwest Coast women held the complex weaving knowledge required. The button blanket offered a faster route to formal crest regalia and was accessible to a wider range of makers, which proved significant during the colonial disruptions of the mid- and late nineteenth century. Its accessibility relative to the Chilkat weaving tradition made it a resilient vehicle for cultural continuity.
Formline design vocabulary in depth: ovoid, U-form, C-form, S-form, weight line theory, and bilateral symmetry
Formline is the organizing visual grammar of Northwest Coast art: a continuous positive-space line of variable width that defines and outlines crest figures across every medium, from the monumental to the intimate. To look at a button blanket without understanding formline is to see a red shape on navy blue; to understand formline is to see a complete grammatical statement about a specific crest identity, encoded with precise rules that any trained eye in the tradition can read. The formline system has been analyzed extensively since Bill Holm’s landmark 1965 study Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form, which gave modern English names to structural elements that makers had always known functionally. The vocabulary that follows draws on Holm’s framework and on subsequent contributions by Robert Davidson, Freda Diesing, and others who have written about formline from within the tradition.
The ovoid is the primary formline element. It is not a simple oval — it is a specific rounded-rectangle form with characteristic geometry: the top edge is gently convex; the bottom edge is more strongly concave (curving inward toward the center); the left and right sides are nearly vertical but with a slight outward bow at mid-height. The result is an egg-like shape that is wider than it is tall, with a flattened or slightly indented bottom. The ovoid’s internal space is where the secondary and tertiary elements live; the ovoid boundary (the formline itself) defines the eye socket, the joint socket (where a limb articulates), the fin base, or any other major structural joint in the crest figure. On a button blanket, the ovoids are the most visually prominent elements — they appear as large closed shapes in the appliqué panel, and their inner edges are where the button rows concentrate most densely because the button boundary must follow the ovoid’s strongly curved base and the inflection points at its corners.
The U-form is the secondary formline element. It is a U-shaped band — two parallel sides curving to join at the bottom — of relatively uniform width that fills the interior space of the crest figure where the primary ovoid forms leave room. U-forms appear in the interior of limb segments (the space between the joint ovoids at each end of an arm or leg), in fin fields, in tail sections, and in any other secondary space that must be filled with formline to maintain the positive-space-dominant character of the composition. The U-form has variants: the split-U, in which the U band splits into two separate bands partway along its length, allowing it to bifurcate and fill a more complex space; and the nested-U, in which multiple U-forms of decreasing size are stacked concentrically inside a larger U-form. Secondary U-forms are typically rendered in red on a black formline, or black on a red formline, depending on the color hierarchy of the piece.
The C-form is the tertiary filler element — a C-shaped curved band that fills small residual negative spaces in the composition, typically those triangular or kidney-shaped spaces left between a large U-form and the ovoid that borders it, or between two adjacent U-forms. S-forms are elongated C-forms that curve through two inflections and are used to fill longer thin spaces. The role of C-forms and S-forms is compositional completeness: Northwest Coast formline does not leave unresolved negative space. Every area of the composition that is not a positive formline element must be filled with a tertiary element of appropriate size to maintain the visual density of the whole. A correctly composed formline figure has no blank interiors — every space is claimed by either a primary, secondary, or tertiary element.
The color hierarchy in formline governs which color appears at each level. In the classic system: black is the primary formline color (the outermost defining boundary of the crest figure and all major ovoid forms); red is the secondary inner formline color (fills the interior U-forms and the spaces between the primary black boundaries and the secondary elements); blue-green (the characteristic turquoise of historic Northwest Coast work, made from commercial paint in the button blanket era) is the tertiary filler color. On a button blanket, the backing is navy blue (a concession to the material substrate), and the appliqué panel is either red (with black being the backing color showing through the spaces between elements) or black (with red used as the primary appliqué color for the major forms). The most common configuration is a red appliqué panel on navy blue HBC backing, with the formline boundaries outlined in abalone buttons along the panel edge.
Weight line theory governs the varying thickness of the formline boundary. The line is thickest at corners and at the junctions where two formline elements meet — particularly at the points where a U-form emerges from an ovoid, or where two parallel lines of a U-form curve to join at the bottom. The line thins to its minimum along straight or gently curved runs between these junctions. The result is a line that appears to breathe — swelling with implied structural force at stress points and relaxing along the runs between them. This variable width is not decorative but functional: it encodes the relative importance of the design line at each point along its length. In appliqué construction, achieving correct weight line variation requires the melton panel edge to be cut with this variation built in — the appliqué shape is widest at the junction areas and narrowest along straight runs. The button row placed along the panel’s inner edge then reinforces the weight line by naturally concentrating more buttons around the curves (shorter spacing on the inner edge of a curve) and spreading them along straight runs.
Bilateral symmetry is a requirement of the system at the level of the whole composition. A crest figure depicted on a button blanket must mirror left and right across the central vertical axis. This applies whether the figure is shown full-face (as is common for frontal crests like the Raven, the Eagle, or the Killer Whale) or in split-form (the split-form convention, used when the figure is shown in what appears to be a profile view but is actually a symmetric split-body representation with both halves of the animal body folded out flat to the left and right, with the central spine running vertically and each side showing one of the animal’s two eyes, two legs, two pectoral fins, etc.). The split-form convention is one of the most characteristic features of Northwest Coast art and one of the most difficult for viewers outside the tradition to read: the animal appears initially as an abstract bilateral shape, but once the viewer learns to identify the formline elements (the ovoid eye, the U-form tail, the trigon corner of the mouth), the figure assembles itself as a complete animal seen simultaneously from above, below, and both sides.
HBC trade wool properties: the 4-point blanket backing
The Hudson’s Bay Company trade blanket that serves as the button blanket backing is not a generic wool blanket but a specific product with defined textile properties that determine how it behaves as a backing material. Understanding these properties matters for anyone sourcing new material for contemporary button blanket making.
HBC point blankets are woven from 100% wool at mills that have historically included Whitney, Oxfordshire (the traditional HBC supplier from the 1700s onward), Witney-district mills, and mills in Gloucester and other West of England woolen centers. The “point” system refers to the short embroidered marks woven into the selvage edge that indicated the blanket’s size and trade value: a 4-point blanket is the standard adult-size ceremonial format, measuring approximately 150 centimeters wide by 180 centimeters long (60 by 72 inches in imperial, the traditional “six-foot blanket” of the trade). The blanket is woven in a plain or simple twill structure, then heavily milled (fulled) in hot water to consolidate the fiber and produce a dense, firm, slightly felted surface that resists fraying at cut edges, resists penetration by needle marks from repeated stitching and unstitch cycles, and drapes with a characteristic heaviness and authority in motion. The finished weight is typically 600–900 g/m², comparable to a heavy overcoat wool.
Navy blue is by far the most common ground color in historical button blanket examples, for both practical and aesthetic reasons. Practical: navy was a standard commercial dye color reliably available in bulk production and relatively stable under the salt-air and variable humidity conditions of Northwest Coast use. Aesthetic: the deep navy creates the strongest contrast with red melton appliqué (the most common appliqué color), making the crest figure read clearly at distance in the indoor firelit or outdoor ceremonial contexts where button blankets are displayed. Red blanket grounds with black appliqué represent a valid alternative in the historical record. Black blanket grounds with red appliqué are less common but documented in certain community traditions.
The wool retains a portion of its lanolin content even after the fulling process — HBC blankets are not scoured to the degree that fully removes all lanolin, because retained lanolin contributes to the blanket’s natural water repellency and the characteristic handle and drape of the finished textile. This lanolin retention is relevant for button blanket makers because it affects how thread sits against the backing surface (slightly lubricated) and how the backing responds to steam pressing during appliqué construction (steam applied to a lanolin-retaining wool will cause some fiber migration and felting action if too aggressive; light pressing with a dry cloth barrier is preferred).
The HBC blanket stripe orientation is a practical construction question for contemporary makers: historical blankets were designed with the striped end borders (the characteristic gold, green, red, and black stripes woven at the short ends) oriented horizontally when the blanket is worn as a robe — the stripes run across the width. When cutting down a new HBC blanket to button blanket backing dimensions, a maker must decide whether to keep the stripes visible at the hem (traditional) or orient the blanket vertically so that the stripes run down the sides (a rarer configuration). The hem stripe visible at the bottom of a hung button blanket, combined with wool yarn fringe attached below it, is the most traditional presentation.
Button history and types: from dentalium to abalone
The material history of Northwest Coast regalia decoration before the button era is dominated by two prestige materials: dentalium shells (Antalis pretiosum, the tusk shell collected principally at a site off the west coast of Vancouver Island and traded widely across North America) and beaten copper. Both of these materials predated the button blanket by centuries and continued in use alongside buttons after the button blanket emerged. Dentalium shells, strung in graduated rows, were used to edge robes, decorate dance aprons, and mark high-status garments; copper, beaten into flat plates and sometimes cut and filed into formline shapes, was used as decorative appliqué on clothing and as the material for the large prestige shields called coppers that were among the highest-value trade and potlatch objects on the Northwest Coast. Neither dentalium nor copper took the specific role that buttons came to occupy — a small round form used in continuous rows to trace a formline boundary — but they established the conceptual framework: regalia is defined by the presence of specific materials arranged in patterns that identify the wearer’s clan and status.
Glass buttons reached the Northwest Coast trade through maritime networks in the 1830s–1860s. The earliest buttons documented in button blanket contexts are large flat glass buttons of the type manufactured in Bohemian glass workshops and traded globally through British and American commercial networks; they ranged in color from clear to black to white to dark red, and in diameter from approximately 15 to 30 millimeters. Glass buttons served the same visual function as abalone — a light-reflecting round form that outlines formline shapes — but without the iridescent shimmer of shell nacre. The transition from glass to mother-of-pearl trade buttons in the 1870s–1890s increased the visual richness of button blankets significantly: mother-of-pearl (the nacreous interior of various marine bivalves, primarily Pinctada species from Pacific and Indian Ocean trade sources) has a multi-layered iridescent surface that catches light similarly to abalone but with a slightly different spectral quality. By approximately 1900, Northern abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana) had become the standard material for prestige button blanket work in Southeast Alaska and coastal British Columbia, used either as commercially-cut buttons purchased through trading post supply chains or as buttons cut by the makers themselves from harvested shell.
Haliotis kamtschatkana, the Northern or pinto abalone, is native to the Pacific Northwest coast from Alaska to Baja California, with its core range spanning Alaska through British Columbia and Washington state. Its shell interior is white to pale silver-aquamarine in nacre color, with minimal warm-red overtones; the iridescent play of color tends toward cooler blues, greens, and silvers compared to the warmer pinks and greens of southern California abalone species. The shell reaches 12–15 centimeters at maximum adult size, providing buttons of 15–25 millimeter diameter from a single shell with minimal wastage. Northern abalone was listed as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in April 2023, following decades of population decline from a combination of commercial overharvesting (prior to the California and British Columbia moratoria), sea otter predation recovery along the Pacific Northwest coast as sea otter populations rebounded after their near-extinction in the nineteenth century, and the withering syndrome bacterial disease that caused mass mortality events in California populations in the 1980s–1990s. British Columbia had already implemented a moratorium on commercial Northern abalone harvest in 1990; the ESA 2023 listing closes the remaining U.S. commercial harvest pathway. The practical consequence for button blanket makers is that new Northern abalone shell from legal commercial harvest is no longer available in U.S. or Canadian waters; supply comes from pre-moratorium stock held by dealers, from estate redistribution within Northwest Coast communities, and from occasional limited First Nations food fishery byproduct.
Haliotis rufescens, the Red abalone, is California’s largest abalone species, reaching shell lengths of 28–30 centimeters in old adults. It is the subject of a legal commercial dive fishery for shell (not meat — the recreational and commercial meat fishery was closed in 1997 due to population concerns, but shell harvest from naturally deceased animals and from the growing commercial aquaculture industry continues to supply the crafts market). Red abalone nacre shows warmer iridescent colors than Northern abalone — pinks, warm greens, and reddish flashes alongside the cooler blues — and its larger shell size means that large-diameter buttons (20–25 millimeter and above) are more readily available. Commercial Red abalone dive harvesters operating from Mendocino and Sonoma County ports sell worked buttons (cut, edged, and drilled) directly to craft buyers; prices in 2026 run approximately $0.60–$2.80 per button for standard 15–22 millimeter diameter, with larger buttons and unusually vivid color commanding premium prices. A full button blanket with a moderately dense button pattern requires approximately 300–600 buttons depending on design complexity and blanket field coverage, representing a material cost of $180–$1,680 in Red abalone buttons alone at current prices.
Appliqué construction step by step: melton wool, grain, curve cutting, and blind slip stitch
The appliqué construction of a button blanket involves a sequence of material and technique decisions that distinguish ceremonially appropriate work from commercial imitations. Each decision is documentable and teachable, which is precisely why Patreon has become the preferred platform for button blanket makers sharing this knowledge.
The appliqué fabric is melton wool — a densely woven, heavily milled wool cloth with a characteristically smooth, flat, slightly felted surface. Red melton is the most traditionally common appliqué color against the navy HBC backing (red is historically the dominant appliqué color in most documented examples); black melton against a navy or red backing is also established in the tradition. Melton’s dense fiber structure gives it three properties essential to button blanket work: it cuts cleanly without fraying (the fulled fiber surface does not unravel at cut edges), it holds a turned-under seam allowance without springing back (the compressed fiber surface accepts a fold and stays folded), and it provides sufficient visual mass and opacity to read clearly against the backing at ceremonial distances.
Grain alignment is the first technical decision and one that immediately distinguishes trained from untrained work. Melton wool, like all woven fabrics, has a directional grain: the warp threads run parallel to the selvage, and fabric cut on the straight grain (warp or weft direction) hangs true and lies flat when draped; fabric cut on the bias (diagonal to the grain) stretches, distorts, and hangs unevenly. The appliqué panels that form the crest figure must be cut with the grain running parallel to the selvage edge of the backing so that both the backing and the appliqué share the same hang direction. When the blanket is worn and moves with the dancer’s movement, the appliqué panels move with the backing rather than pulling across it. Grain misalignment causes the appliqué edges to ripple and the seam allowances to push through the top surface.
Convex curve cutting is the most technically demanding step in appliqué preparation. Formline shapes include strongly convex curves — the outer arc of an ovoid, the base of a large U-form, the shoulder curve of a crest figure — that must turn under as a seam allowance without creating pleats, ridges, or pulling. The method for achieving a flat turned-under edge on a convex curve is clipping: a series of cuts made perpendicular to the seam allowance fold line, spaced 8–10 millimeters apart along the convex arc, each cut stopping 2–3 millimeters from the fold line. These clips allow the excess fabric of the seam allowance to spread open (each segment of the seam allowance between clips fans out slightly as the edge turns under the fold line), distributing the material that would otherwise pile up as a pleat. For tightly curved sections (radius below 20 millimeters), clip spacing is reduced to 5–6 millimeters. For inside curves (concave edges), the problem is reversed — the seam allowance must compress rather than spread, and notching (V-cuts removing a small wedge of fabric from the seam allowance at intervals) performs the equivalent function. The standard seam allowance for button blanket appliqué is 15 millimeters (5/8 inch), providing enough body to stay folded under the stitch line when the blanket is handled and worn but not so much bulk that the turned edge creates a ridge visible through the top surface of the melton.
Basting holds the turned seam allowance in position before the final slip stitch. Long running stitches (10–12 millimeters stitch length, 4–5 millimeters in from the turned edge) in a contrasting thread hold the panel flat against the backing while the blind slip stitch is worked. Basting is removed after the slip stitch is complete.
Blind slip stitch execution is the joining stitch that holds the appliqué panel to the backing with minimal visual evidence on the top surface. The mechanics: the needle enters the backing fabric from the back face (or from just under the turned edge of the appliqué), passes upward through the backing to the top surface, and catches 2–3 threads of the backing fabric at a point exactly adjacent to the fold line of the turned appliqué edge. The needle then exits the backing and enters the folded edge of the appliqué from inside the fold, travels a short distance (3–5 millimeters) along inside the fold, and exits the folded edge back at the top surface, passing into the next entry point in the backing. Each stitch advances the thread 3–5 millimeters along the edge. The thread tension is gentle — firm enough that the appliqué edge lies flat against the backing without any lift, but not so tight that it draws the backing surface puckered. When executed correctly, the slip stitch is invisible from the top surface: the only visible evidence is the slight indentation where the thread crosses from backing to appliqué fold, hidden in the shadow of the turned edge.
Point management for sharp formline corners requires a two-step turn-under sequence. The seam allowance at the corner point is trimmed to a 45-degree diagonal cut, removing the excess fabric that would otherwise create a thick lump at the point. The first side of the corner is folded under and pressed with a fingernail, then the second side is folded over it, with the very tip of the corner tucked under with the needle tip to produce a clean, sharp angle. Rushing the point turn produces a blunted or frayed corner that undermines the crispness of the formline composition.
Button attachment mechanics: thread, spacing, and visual density
The button attachment that outlines the formline boundary is both a structural joining operation and a visual design decision. Getting it right requires attention to thread selection, stitching mechanics, spacing consistency, and the relationship between button placement and the underlying formline shape.
The correct thread for button attachment on a button blanket is either waxed linen thread (linen is strong, abrasion-resistant, and accepts wax well; the wax reduces friction between the thread and the button hole edges, which otherwise wear through the thread over years of ceremonial use) or heavy nylon monofilament or twisted nylon thread (typically size 18 or size 20, roughly 0.3–0.5 millimeter diameter). Synthetic thread in this weight has superior abrasion resistance compared to natural fiber threads and does not absorb moisture, reducing the risk of thread rot in the maritime climate of the Northwest Coast. The thread color should match the button shell color rather than the fabric color — a cream or near-white thread against abalone shell is far less visible than a navy thread that stands out in the gap between buttons.
Button attachment mechanics: each button is stitched through its two holes (standard 2-hole flat button) with the thread passing through both the appliqué panel and the backing wool with each stitch, anchoring the button to both layers simultaneously. This through-both-layers stitching ensures that the button attachment does not gradually lift the appliqué edge away from the backing as tension builds through use. The stitch sequence: needle up through backing and appliqué from the back face, through one hole of the button, back down through the second hole, through both appliqué and backing to the back face, then looped two or three times around the thread between the button and the fabric face (creating a short thread shank that prevents the button from sitting too flat against the fabric and allows it to lie at the slight angle relative to the fabric surface that produces the best light-catching behavior), then back up to the front and tied off. A well-attached button shows three or four visible thread loops through the button holes, tightly parallel.
Center-to-center spacing of buttons along the formline boundary is typically 10–15 millimeters for standard 15–20 millimeter diameter buttons. This produces a near-continuous row in which each button overlaps or nearly touches the adjacent button; wider spacing allows the backing fabric to show between buttons and reduces the visual solidity of the formline outline. On tight inside curves, buttons are spaced closer to maintain the curve’s shape; on the inside of a tight ovoid corner, buttons may be as close as 8 millimeters center to center. The slight diagonal orientation of buttons relative to the formline edge — each button tilted very slightly from perpendicular to the edge, all in the same direction — makes the row read as a clean continuous formline rather than a series of individual circles. Density per formline boundary section: a major crest figure on a button blanket typically requires 60–100 buttons per continuous boundary section (a full ovoid outline might use 40–60 buttons; a large outer U-form border might use 80–120).
Fringe and finishing: wool yarn fringe, hem binding, and ceremonial protocol
The fringe finish at the bottom hem of a button blanket is both aesthetic and functional — it adds visual weight and motion to the lower edge, drawing attention to the blanket’s movement during dance and providing the characteristic sweep visible when the wearer turns. Fringe construction is the final step of the blanket and is attached not directly to the raw hem edge of the backing but through an intermediate hem binding that provides structural reinforcement.
Hem binding is a twill tape or selvedge strip, 12–15 millimeters wide, in a complementary color (navy or red), stitched along the hem edge to protect and reinforce it. The binding is first stitched to the top (front) face of the hem, then folded over the cut edge to the back face and stitched again, enclosing the raw edge between two layers of binding. This creates a clean, structurally reinforced hem edge that does not fray under the mechanical stress of repeated fringe attachment and the weight of the fringe in use.
Fringe material is HBC-weight wool yarn — the same wool composition as the blanket backing — in 6-ply (six strands twisted together, producing a yarn of approximately 4–6 millimeters diameter). Individual fringe elements are made by looping a doubled length of yarn through the hem binding and knotting the loop, then cutting the bottom of the loop to produce two hanging strands. Finished hang length of the fringe varies by ceremonial protocol and maker preference: shorter fringes (30–40 centimeters finished length) are common on everyday regalia blankets; longer fringes (50–60 centimeters) are associated with high-formality ceremonial use where the drama of the fringe sweep is maximized. The fringe at the hem binding is supplemented in some examples by additional rows of buttons along the hem binding itself, creating a secondary button border above the fringe attach line.
Crest ownership and potlatch protocol: the Raven/Eagle moiety system and contemporary commissioning
The intellectual and legal core of button blanket making is the crest ownership system, and Patreon content that documents this system carries cultural weight that a finished-blanket photograph cannot approach. The system is not a metaphor or a tradition in the colloquial sense of an aesthetic preference — it is a living legal structure with enforcement mechanisms (social, economic, ceremonial) that operates continuously in Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian communities today.
In the Tlingit system, all people belong to one of two moieties: Raven or Eagle. (In northern Tlingit communities, particularly those of the Yukon interior and the communities near Yakutat, the Eagle moiety is called the Wolf moiety, and these terms are used interchangeably; they refer to the same social division.) Moiety membership is matrilineal: the child belongs to the mother’s moiety, regardless of the father’s moiety, and this membership cannot be changed. Raven people and Eagle people must marry across the moiety line — Raven must marry Eagle and Eagle must marry Raven. Within each moiety, specific matrilineal clans (hit [house] groups or kwáan [people of a region] groups) hold specific crests. These crests are the visual property of the clan: the right to display them is inherited through the matrilineal line, and the display rights are asserted, challenged, and affirmed through the potlatch (ku.éex’) protocol.
Specific crest assignments to specific clans vary by community and by the historical event accounts that explain how each crest was acquired (crest acquisition narratives are themselves owned and recited property). General patterns include: the Raven moiety’s Raven clan holds the Raven crest; the Frog House holds the Frog crest; the Coho Salmon clan holds the Coho; the Brown Bear House holds the Bear; the Beaver clan holds the Beaver. The Eagle moiety’s Killer Whale House holds the Killer Whale crest; the Eagle clan holds the Eagle and in some communities the Brown Bear (reflecting historical crest transactions between houses); the Wolf clan holds the Wolf. Some crests are held by multiple clans in different communities because the same crest was independently acquired by different lineages in different historical events — the Killerwhale crest, for instance, is held by multiple houses across Tlingit territory, but each holding lineage has a specific acquisition narrative that distinguishes their right from others.
A ku.éex’ is the general Tlingit term for a formal feast at which potlatch obligations are discharged. The canonical form involves a hosting clan that feeds and gifts the opposite moiety guests, and in doing so validates the crest rights of the host lineage. Button blankets are worn to ku.éex’ as crest displays, and the act of wearing a button blanket in a ceremonial context is itself an assertion of the crest right it depicts. When a new button blanket is to be made for a clan member, the commissioning process properly begins with clan elder consultation: the elder or elders of the lineage confirm the commissioning person’s hereditary right to the depicted crest, provide any historical or narrative context relevant to the specific crest image, and may specify design conventions particular to the lineage’s use of that crest (some crests have associated color requirements, compositional conventions, or accessory elements that are lineage-specific). The formal permission granting — and the witnessing of that permission by others present — is what validates the commission.
Contemporary crest commission practice in the 2020s has added a documentation layer that Patreon is uniquely suited to support. Because the potlatch and the in-person witness validation that accompanied it were suppressed for decades (the Canadian Indian Act Potlatch Ban of 1885, amended and enforced until 1951, made potlatches illegal; similar administrative suppression applied in the U.S. through the Indian Agent system during the same period), the living chain of oral witness testimony has gaps. Contemporary practitioners use written documentation, recorded elder interviews, archival photograph analysis, and genealogical research to supplement oral tradition. A button blanket creator on Patreon can document this research in patron-exclusive posts: the genealogical reasoning, the elder consultation notes, the relevant archival photographs from museum collections (Sheldon Jackson Museum in Sitka; the Museum of Anthropology at UBC; the American Museum of Natural History’s Northwest Coast collections), and the specific design decisions that flow from the research. This documentation layer distinguishes cultural accountability from cultural appropriation and creates a public record of legitimate cultural transmission.
Haida, Tsimshian, Nisga’a, Gitxsan, and Kwakwaka’wakw variants
The button blanket tradition extends beyond the Tlingit to neighboring Northwest Coast nations, each with distinct aesthetic emphases and social contexts for button blanket use. Understanding the differences between these traditions is part of the cultural literacy that a serious button blanket Patreon creator delivers to their patrons.
Haida button blankets, from the Haida Gwaii communities (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands) and from Masset and Skidegate on the northern and southern ends of the archipelago, tend to show very large central ovoid forms and a preference for strong bilateral composition with relatively open negative space. Haida formline work of the classic era (mid-nineteenth century to early twentieth century) is characterized by bold, high-contrast primary formlines with minimum secondary elaboration — what Robert Davidson has described as a “bold simplicity” distinct from the more intricate secondary-element elaboration seen in Tsimshian work. Haida button blankets often feature a single large bilateral figure centered in the blanket field with a relatively generous negative space margin around it, letting the crest form speak for itself without the dense fill of secondary elements that characterizes some Tsimshian examples.
Tsimshian button blankets (Tsimshian communities centered historically at the Skeena River mouth and at Prince Rupert, and now including the Kitselas, Kitsumkalum, and Metlakatla communities) show more complex internal tertiary fill work — the secondary U-forms and tertiary C-forms are more elaborated, producing a denser visual texture in the crest figure interior. Tsimshian formline work is known for particularly fine feather and scale pattern detailing within ovoid interiors and for complex multiple-figure compositions where a primary crest figure contains subsidiary figures within its body segments. Tsimshian button blankets may also show a greater variety of crest figure types because the Tsimshian social system, while also based on matrilineal clans, is organized into four phratries (Wolf, Raven, Eagle, Killer Whale) rather than two moieties, providing a somewhat different crest roster.
Nisga’a and Gitxsan communities, located in the interior Nass and Skeena River valleys of British Columbia, share the Tsimshian phratry system and the general Tsimshian formline vocabulary but sometimes show distinctive border conventions in their button blankets — wider border panels, different proportional relationships between the central crest figure and the surrounding border, and in some historical examples, a use of appliqué border elements that differs in color from the central crest figure (a device less common in coastal Tlingit and Haida work). The Gitxsan tradition in particular includes a strong visual art tradition associated with totem poles at Kitwanga and Kispiox, and the formline used in button blankets from these communities shows close formal relationships with the pole carving aesthetic of their respective villages.
Kwakwaka’wakw button blankets, from the communities of northern Vancouver Island and the adjacent mainland coast (Alert Bay, Fort Rupert, Cape Mudge), represent a different stylistic branch — the Kwakwaka’wakw formline tradition shows stronger color contrast, more emphatic use of black outlines, and in historical examples a somewhat different ovoid geometry than the northern style. Kwakwaka’wakw ceremonial life, centered on the winter ceremony (Tla’sala) and the potlatch protocol, makes equally extensive use of button blankets as crest regalia, and Kwakwaka’wakw-made blankets appear frequently in the Pacific Northwest art market. An artist or educator offering Patreon content about Northwest Coast regalia textiles should clarify which specific tradition their work engages with, because attributing Kwakwaka’wakw aesthetic conventions to Tlingit work, or vice versa, is the kind of error that undercuts credibility with the communities the work is meant to serve.
Historical timeline: from maritime trade to residential school suppression to the Northwest Coast art renaissance
The button blanket’s historical trajectory runs from its emergence in the maritime trade economy through a period of suppression under colonial policy to a mid-twentieth-century renaissance that continues today. This timeline is not merely background — it is the context within which every contemporary button blanket is made and worn.
The maritime fur trade expansion of the 1790s–1820s created the material conditions for the button blanket by flooding the Northwest Coast with trade goods including wool blankets, buttons, and glass beads at a scale and regularity that made these materials sufficiently common to use as base materials for a new regalia form. The HBC’s trade dominance from the 1820s standardized the blanket format and established the color conventions (navy blue dominant) that persist in button blanket making today. By the 1850s–1870s, button blankets were sufficiently established as a regalia form to appear in ethnographic collections assembled by visiting naturalists and naval officers.
The residential school era (approximately 1870–1970 in Canada, with the last federally-funded school closing in 1996; earlier closure dates in the U.S. system) and the Potlatch Ban (Section 3 of the Indian Act, 1885, amended to broaden prohibition of giveaways in 1895, repealed in 1951) created systematic pressure against the ceremonial and social contexts in which button blankets were made and worn. The Potlatch Ban explicitly targeted the potlatch system — the validation mechanism through which crest rights were asserted and blankets displayed — and prosecutions under the Ban removed blankets and other regalia from communities in seized-property actions. The 1921 Dan Cranmer potlatch prosecution, in which approximately 35 Kwakwaka’wakw people were convicted and over 600 ceremonial objects (including button blankets) were confiscated and distributed to museums and private collectors, is the most documented single instance of this suppression. The regalia seized in 1921 has been the subject of decades of repatriation negotiations; a significant portion has been returned to the Kwakwaka’wakw communities and is held at the U’mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay and the Kwagiulth Museum and Cultural Centre at Cape Mudge.
The post-1969 resistance to the Trudeau government’s White Paper (which proposed eliminating Indian Act special status) and the broader Red Power and American Indian Movement mobilization of the early 1970s accelerated a conscious Indigenous cultural revival across North America. On the Northwest Coast, this revival found institutional expression in the Northwest Coast Art Renaissance of the 1970s–1990s, associated most visibly with Haida artist Bill Reid (1920–1998), Haida artist Robert Davidson (b. 1946), and Haida and Tsimshian educators including Freda Diesing (1925–2002). Diesing in particular spent decades teaching formline design to the next generation of Northwest Coast artists in what became known as the “Freda Diesing School” of formline transmission: structured, systematic instruction in the formal rules of the visual system, including the vocabulary of ovoid, U-form, and weight line described in this post, combined with direct elder mentorship and cultural protocol education. The button blanket tradition was explicitly part of this revival and has continued to grow as a community practice in both reservation/reserve communities and in the urban Indigenous communities of Seattle, Portland, Anchorage, Juneau, Ketchikan, Vancouver, and Victoria.
Contemporary urban Indigenous textile communities in cities like Vancouver include not just Tlingit and Haida diaspora members but also Squamish Nation, Musqueam, and Stó:lō members whose own Coast Salish textile traditions (Salish loom weaving, Coast Salish blanket weaving) are distinct from the formline button blanket but who participate in shared Northwest Coast ceremony and cultural exchange. This urban context — where multiple Northwest Coast nations are present in the same city — creates both the richest possible cultural learning environment and the most complex arena for navigating crest protocol and cultural attribution.
Patreon tier structure for button blanket creators
Patreon tiers for Tlingit and Northwest Coast button blanket creators typically organize content around two distinct value propositions: cultural and historical documentation (for patrons who want to understand the tradition, the crest system, and the archival record), and making-focused technical instruction (for patrons who are learning or refining their own button blanket construction skills).
A Clan Research tier at approximately $15/month delivers monthly crest documentation posts that go beyond anything publicly available: the process of genealogical research to confirm a specific crest right, annotated notes from elder consultation sessions (with the elder’s consent and attribution), analysis of specific archival photographs from museum collections showing historical examples of a crest figure in use, cross-references between family oral history and documentary records, and the decision logic for translating a historical crest form into contemporary button blanket composition. This tier is for the culturally curious patron who wants to understand how the tradition works from the inside rather than from an external art-historical perspective. The documentation produced at this tier also creates a permanent archival record of the creator’s research that outlasts any individual Patreon subscription.
A Regalia Maker tier at approximately $40/month delivers the full technical package for button blanket construction: complete formline pattern downloads for both halves of a bilateral crest figure (at scale, ready for transfer), appliqué cutting guides with grain marks and seam allowance indicated, button placement diagrams showing the spacing and orientation logic for the specific formline shapes in the pattern, access to the creator’s abalone button sourcing network (specific California dive harvesters with reliable shell quality and current pricing), Discord community access for real-time construction questions, and a quarterly patron-only live demonstration covering a specific construction challenge (curve clipping, point management, button shank technique, or fringe attachment, for example). Regalia Maker patrons are the serious practitioners who are making button blankets for their own families or for commission, and the technical content at this tier is directly actionable.
Apple Tax receipts for button blanket creators
Native American urban diaspora audiences in Seattle, Portland, Anchorage, Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka, Vancouver, and Victoria skew heavily toward iPhone. iOS adoption in these communities runs approximately 62–74%, reflecting both the general prevalence of iPhone in North American urban demographics and the specific media platforms (Instagram, YouTube, TikTok) through which button blanket and Northwest Coast art content primarily circulates — all of which are iOS-dominant. From November 1, 2026, any patron who subscribes to a Patreon creator through the Patreon iOS app routes 30% of their subscription price through Apple before the creator receives anything.
At $200/month Patreon income with 64% iOS share: $38.40/month ($460.80/year) extracted by Apple before the creator receives a dollar. That is four pounds of red melton wool, or approximately 100 abalone buttons at current California dive prices, disappearing monthly into Apple’s iOS commission. At $350/month with 66% iOS share: $69.30/month ($831.60/year) — more than enough to cover a full bolt of HBC-weight navy wool backing for a complete blanket, annually. At $500/month with 68% iOS share: $102/month ($1,224/year) — an entire blanket’s materials budget, twelve times over, given away to Apple annually.
KeepTier routes all patron subscriptions through Stripe web checkout — a browser-based payment page that exists entirely outside the Patreon iOS app environment. Because Apple’s 30% commission applies only to purchases made through Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism within an iOS app, a transaction that takes place in a web browser is not subject to it. The legal basis is the same framework Patreon itself has used when offering web-only billing options: directing patrons to subscribe via the creator’s web link rather than through the iOS app removes the iOS commission entirely. KeepTier charges creators a flat $9/month platform fee regardless of revenue volume — no percentage commission, no sliding scale, no per-transaction markup beyond standard Stripe rates. For a button blanket creator earning $350/month with 66% iOS audience, switching to KeepTier from iOS-heavy Patreon billing recovers the full $69.30/month Apple commission and replaces it with a predictable $9 flat fee: a net improvement of $60.30/month that stays with the creator and the cultural work they are doing.
Five frequently asked questions
What is formline design and how does it govern button blanket composition?
Formline is the organizing visual grammar of Northwest Coast art: a continuous positive-space line of variable width that defines and outlines crest figures across every medium from totem poles to button blankets. The system uses a strict hierarchy: the ovoid (rounded-rectangle form) as primary element defining joints and eyes; the U-form as secondary element filling limb interiors and fin fields; C-forms and S-forms as tertiary fillers completing the composition. Bilateral symmetry is required at the composition level. Weight line theory governs formline width variation: thick at corners and junctions, thin along straight runs. On a button blanket, the red or black melton appliqué panel is cut to the formline shape of the crest figure, with the abalone button row placed along the inner edge of the panel to follow the weight line variation of the composition. A correct formline composition has no unresolved negative space — every interior area is claimed by either a primary, secondary, or tertiary element.
How does crest ownership work in the Tlingit moiety system and what does commissioning a button blanket require?
Tlingit society divides into two matrilineal moieties: Raven and Eagle/Wolf. Moiety membership is inherited from the mother. Within each moiety, specific clans hold hereditary rights to specific crests — the Raven clan holds the Raven crest, the Killer Whale House holds the Killer Whale crest, and so on. A button blanket depicting a crest can only be legitimately made and worn by a clan member who holds that hereditary right, or by someone who has obtained formal permission from the owning lineage through clan elder consultation and potlatch validation. Contemporary commissioning involves genealogical research confirming the crest right, documented elder consultation with attribution, and in many cases the production of a written commissioning file that records the permission structure. This documentation layer is what separates cultural accountability from appropriation, and it is the primary content that Patreon enables button blanket creators to share with their patron communities.
What is the difference between Northern abalone and Red abalone for button sourcing, and how has the ESA 2023 listing changed the market?
Northern abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana) is the Pacific Northwest coast species historically associated with button blanket regalia; its nacre is cool silver-aquamarine and it is native to the same coastal region as the Tlingit and Haida communities. It was listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in April 2023, making commercial harvest illegal in U.S. waters; British Columbia’s commercial harvest moratorium has been in place since 1990. New Northern abalone shell is no longer commercially available; supply comes from pre-moratorium stock, estate redistribution, and limited First Nations food fishery byproduct. Red abalone (Haliotis rufescens) from California’s legal commercial dive fishery is the practical primary source for contemporary button blanket work at scale; its nacre tends toward warmer pink-green iridescence rather than the cooler silver-aqua of Northern abalone. Prices from Mendocino and Sonoma coast harvesters run approximately $0.60–$2.80 per button depending on size and polish quality.
What are the appliqué construction steps that differentiate a well-constructed button blanket from a tourist-market version?
Five specific technical decisions determine construction quality: grain alignment of the melton appliqué panels parallel to the backing selvage (so both layers drape together rather than pulling against each other); convex curve clipping (perpendicular cuts to the seam allowance at 8–10mm intervals, each stopping 2–3mm from the fold line, allowing the seam allowance to spread flat when turned under); a minimum 15mm seam allowance (less than 12mm does not hold a stable fold through repeated handling); blind slip stitch execution (catching only 2–3 threads of the backing surface, with gentle tension that holds the edge flat without puckering); and two-stage point management (diagonal trim of the corner seam allowance plus two-stage fold turn to produce a clean sharp formline corner). All five of these decisions are directly teachable through Patreon process documentation in a way that finished-blanket photography cannot convey.
How does the Apple Tax affect Tlingit and Tsimshian button blanket creators on Patreon and what does KeepTier do differently?
From November 1, 2026, Apple extracts a 30% commission from every Patreon subscription purchased through the Patreon iOS app. With 62–74% iOS adoption in Native American urban diaspora communities, most patrons subscribe through iOS. At $200/month with 64% iOS, that is $38.40/month lost. At $350/month with 66% iOS, $69.30/month. At $500/month with 68% iOS, $102/month. KeepTier routes all patron subscriptions through Stripe web checkout outside the Patreon iOS app, placing the transaction outside Apple’s in-app purchase jurisdiction entirely. KeepTier charges a flat $9/month regardless of revenue volume. KeepTier total annual cost: $108. Apple Tax annual cost for a $350/month creator at 66% iOS: $831.60.