This Chilkat killer whale blanket is eight feet wide by 7 feet high. It was designed in 1993 by William Lee Burkhart of Sitka, Alaska.

Anna Brown Ehlers was born and raised in Juneau, Alaska. Her father is from the Killer Whale Fin House, in Klukwan, Alaska, 22 miles north of Haines. Anna’s mother is from the famed Whale house, also in Klukwan, in the heart of the Chilkat Valley. Anna wanted to make Chilkat weavings, ever since she first saw her uncle wearing a Chilkat blanket when she was four years old.

These Chilkat blankets are made with hand spun wool of yellow cedar bark and wool, which is hand=spun on the thigh. The yellow cedar bark is collected in the springtime, cured in water and then split paper thin, after which it is split into linguine size pieces.

This project took twice as much warp as a regular Chilkat blanket, this was created in the style of the house screens of the old tribal long houses with a 12-degree angle at the top.

It took Anna and her three children five months to spin the wool for this blanket. It took Anna two years to weave this Chilkat killer whale blanket from start to finish.