Scarlet Quince News
February 2017

We have been very busy getting SQ Stitch (see last month's newsletter) ready to release, so there hasn't been much time for new patterns. We do have one, though -- La Bella Principessa - Leonardo da Vinci. This was the suggestion of Carolyn Ferris, of Yakima, Washington, and we've sent her a copy of the pattern to thank her for her suggestion!

February ALMOST got away from me, but I couldn't let it go by entirely without announcing that this month marks our 15th anniversary! I thought you might like to know a little about how Scarlet Quince got started, and some of the highlights since then.

In 2002, I was stitching a pattern that I wasn't enjoying much -- not enough color to suit me, and an insipid subject -- and someone suggested that I try making my own design. I bought a shareware program and tried it. My first pattern was Corbeille de Fleurs - Joseph Nigg. I listed it on eBay to see if anyone would buy it, and someone did! After this extensive market research, I decided to go into business, so the next thing I needed was a company name. I wanted a name that would suggest color and beauty and elegance. I think I tried about 120 names, some real words and many more invented, but it was the height of the dot-com boom and none were available as domain names. Then, in February, I was out for a walk, and the scarlet quince was in bloom. (It's a small shrub, about the earliest thing that blooms and in fact, it gets its flowers before it has any leaves -- our logo picture is a little inaccurate.) I checked scarletquince.com and grabbed the name. I registered the business with the state of Texas and got started on a web site and more patterns. The site went live in April of 2002 with a grand total of 10 patterns.

Our first patterns were 2-hole punched at the top and tied with a piece of red embroidery floss, but by November of 2003 we needed a less labor-intensive method and began coil binding them. We introduced large print patterns in December of 2005, and floss labels in March of 2007. In August of 2011 we added color swatches to the floss labels, after I put floss back onto the wrong bobbin. And in February of 2014 we added electronic patterns. There have been many other milestones, but those are the biggest. Many of the changes to the site and the patterns have been the result of questions and problems that you, our customers, have had. And we have taken pattern suggestions from the very beginning, which has brought us art we wouldn't have known about otherwise.

It has been fun, and I truly don't know where the time has gone. That has been in no small part because it's clear to me that cross stitchers are some of the nicest people in the world! Cross stitching must be good for the disposition! And to celebrate, I think we need a ...

Everything is 15% off starting today and running through March 12 (that's 15 days). Thank you for being our customers and subscribers and constructive critics!