Well, it’s been a very busy month in April and here it is already the middle of May. As I worked on a couple of orders, I realized that this business is more and more about being consistent, using high grade products, and paying attention to detail.
My daughter is a real estate agent in Arkansas. As a closing gift, I embroidered a package consisting of a canvas tote, wine apron, 2 hand towels, 1 dish towel, and a kitchen apron. What a fun project. It was a challenging in shrinking down designs to fit the wine bottle, but all in all that came out well. She was happy and advertised them for me in her office and on social media.
At my spa appointment recently, the owner and I had a conversation about what to embroider for her in her newly expanded space. I did some spa bags that ended up being my favorite so far in terms of a project. The design by John Deer was clear, crisp and embroidered beautifully (see https://desisthreads.com/products/custom-embroidered-spa-makeup-bag). However, one spa bag was sacrificed to the god of bad hooping, as I caught the inside pocket underneath the hoop and ended up having to cut out the pocket in order to remove the hoop. A Miss. Okay, a lesson there to remember. Just goes to show that no matter how many items need embroidered, each one requires attention to detail.
Another hit were some aprons I worked on for the site store. (see https://desisthreads.com/products/who-likes-well-done-custom-embroidered-apron) The lesson in this project was the continued importance of using high quality backing as one apron was constructed with 100% polyester as some slight puckering occurred in a couple areas as I used soft tear backing instead of the crisp tear backing from Madeira. (I ran out of it and thought it would work with other materials I had on hand) Bad idea. They just didn’t look as professional as others. I made new ones with crisp tear backing and they came out well. So mixed hit and miss, I suppose.
Tees were really fun to embroider. Two designs, one with “Bloom” and one with “Inhale/Exhale” came out strikingly well. The Bloom design was done with white thread and stood out on the maroon tee. I used a Navy Mist tee by Gildan for the Inhale/Exhale design. The lesson in this project was that sometimes the simpler the design, the better it looks. I’ll do others, but the results on these tees gave me the confidence to look for other designs that I would have skipped over before. I count this as a hit!
Every mistake I make is not necessarily bad. Sometimes the frustration is high and the emotion is low; however, there is no substitute for experience. I’ll keep making mistakes, but each one helps me to become a better embroiderer.