Hello! We hope 2025 has started well for you. A new year heralds new beginnings, and that’s certainly the case for us here at Jolly Red.
For those of you who may not already know, we are changing the wool supplier for our kits. We’ll talk about that today and give you an update on our progress. It’s all going well, but the transition will take a while. We wish there were more hours in the days, and more days in the weeks!
From Anchor to Appletons, why the change? We’ve used Anchor wool in our kits since we started Jolly Red in the early 1990s, but last autumn we heard – with no prior warning – that Anchor wool production was ceasing. Fortunately for us, we have always kept a very good stock of wool so we were able to stockpile kits for the busy pre-Christmas season.
Why Appletons Wool? The choice for our new wool partner wasn’t difficult. We have been chatting with the ladies at Appletons since we moved to our new premises in 2020. Diana, Debbie and the team at Appletons are keen to support independent designers, and we in turn are delighted to support such a respected British wool brand.
The first kits we started to change over to Appletons were our 12 holes per inch kits such as Farmyard Sampler, Rainbow Hearts and Love Birds.
Since then, we’ve been steadily converting other areas of our range. Some of the swaps from Anchor to Appletons have been wonderfully successful. However, no two wool brands are the same so when the colour matches don’t work, we need to ask ourselves some questions.
Renew, Revive, or Retire? This is our new mantra. When we are about to run out of canvases of a particular design or when the colours don’t match up easily, this is the question I ask myself. I look at each design individually. Does it require a straightforward colour swap, or could it do with a tweak and an update, or should it (sadly) be retired?
Renewing, what’s involved It’s a lot of work changing over a design from our Anchor recipes to Appletons. After the initial colour matching of the wool, we organise a print run of a new batch of canvases. From now on, the colours on our canvases will be listed alphabetically down the right-hand side with details of the corresponding Appletons shades on the accompanying reference chart.
After this, we update our workshop packing book, our computer spreadsheets, and order in the wool. I estimate it’s about 6hrs work for a straightforward conversion, per design.
Reviving – new life! Sometimes things need freshening up. Alphabet Seaside is a new design but is also an updated version of our lovely Seaside Sampler. We’d reached the end of our Seaside Sampler canvases, so after some deliberation, decided that it would benefit from the Revive treatment.
We’ve made the new seaside design the same size as most of our other birth sampler designs and made the name panel area bigger too so two names can fit in, as well as a date. We’ve added other new elements too, such as the puffin, the dogs on the beach, and the cat gazing wistfully at framed pictures of fish.
Retire We will inevitably say goodbye to some designs, so do get in touch if there’s a particular tapestry you’d like to stitch. We understand that it can take a few years to work through your current projects before you treat yourself to a tapestry that you’ve had your eye on for a year or two.
Thank you so much for your comments and encouragement about this big change in our business. Many of you have already used Appletons wool so are familiar with it, and for others we hear you’ve enjoyed being introduced to a new brand.
We have lots of new designs we’re working on, including some that we set aside when we heard the Anchor wool news. We’ll keep you updated via our email newsletter and our Facebook and Instagram pages.
For now, happy stitching!
Kelly
PS Remember to sign up to our newsletter to be the first to hear about new designs, and we’d love to say hello on Facebook and Instagram too!
