My Business Story

My Business Story

One of my favourite things to do is to scroll back in the instagram grid or blogs of business owners I admire and see where their journey began and how it progressed. As everyone has a different business story I always find it so interesting to see the progression from where it started to where it is now, and I've certainly learnt a lot by looking at it too! So it felt only right to share my business story with you all. 


Hi! I'm Tash!

I first picked up a needle when I was around 8 years old. My mum bought me and my sister one of those cross stitch on card kits to keep us occupied during the summer holidays. I was hooked! I continued to cross stitch until I was around 13 years old - when school, boys and a social life started to take over. I would take my cross stitching with me into school and stitch on my lunch breaks by my locker. I still remember the table cloth that came pre-printed with the pattern I was stitching. I forgot to separate the threads out and ended up only being able to finish a quarter of it! 


I still love doing cross stitch - though it takes me forever. But I always read the instructions very carefully first! Kit from stitchsperation

When I started working full time in theatre I would always have a needle and thread in my emergency supplies kit. From fixing costumes to fixing set pieces I found that I was still using those skills I had picked up. I remember being shocked as well that many of my colleagues didn't know how to sew and so couldn't even reattach a simple button on a costume!

In Nov 2016 I quit my full time job without really knowing what to do next. I had the idea to open my own candle making store - but soon found that I had little patience for stirring the wax, pouring of the fragrance, etc etc.


One of my several ill fated attempts at candle making

From Nov until Feb I turned from craft to craft trying them all out (watercolours, sashiko, and needle felting) before finally deciding to embroider a present for a friend's birthday. As I was unemployed I didn't really have a lot of money to spend on buying a gift so thought making something myself would be a nice thing to do.


Some of the sashiko patterns I stitched up

The first hoop I gave away as a present I couldn't wash all the blue water soluble pen out of (and it kept coming back!) but I was so excited I had to share it.


My first finished hoop. I was so incredibly proud of it!

After that I decided to make a few fun hoops. I really wanted to incorporate my love of origami cranes but was also very keen to do something I hadn't seen before. After a quick instagram and Etsy search I found tons of origami crane hoops out there so I started thinking of other animals I loved. I've always had a soft spot for dinosaurs and one of Mr Hatchling's colleagues had been making origami dinosaurs at work - so I googled a few images and loved how they looked. With those references I drew out some designs and got to stitching.



The first dinosaur hoop I ever made!

I had already started a craft Instagram and slowly started to transition it into a place for me to show my embroidery work. I found some fantastic fellow embroiderers and threw myself headfirst into the community and haven't looked back!


My work now spans a much wider variety of dinosaur goodness!

Since then my business has grown to include more detailed illustration work (there's only so much that can be done with thread) and I've got lots of ideas on how to translate this to future products for next year that I can't wait to get started on!