“Cruise To Embroidery Success”

It is time to plan for your next vacation and join us on Royal Caribbean’s “Mariner of the Seas” for a fantastic time on our 3rd annual “Cruise To Embroidery Success”.

On January 23, 2011 we will be departing from Los Angeles, California for a vacation of a life time to the Mexican Riviera!  This past cruise to the Caribbean was such a great time and I am really looking forward to the one coming up January 2011.

I had the opportunity to meet some of the most wonderful people that I have ever met in this industry. These  embroiderers came from all walks of life. We had embroiderers that were just starting out in the business as well as embroiderers that had been in the business for over 15 years.  There were young embroiderers and others that started their business’ after retiring from their life long careers!  We had a grand time networking and sharing all kinds of information about our personal lives,  embroidery, heat transfers, digitizing, and whatever else was on the minds of the embroiderers that would help to grow their business!  This was networking at it’s best!

Visit the ISS Show Before The Embroidery Cruise

This year the cruise will be held in conjunction with the  “ISS Show” in Long Beach, California. This is the largest ISS Show held during the year!   This is a great opportunity for  you to see all of the new equipment and products that are available and have a chance to talk directly to your suppliers.  The show starts January 21 and we are leaving for the Mexican Riviera on January 23rd.

This is an opportunity of a lifetime that you do not want to miss!

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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Today the Embroidery Cruise group spent a fabulous day in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Some of the group toured the Rainforest and the rest of us toured Old San Juan and New San Juan.  It was very interesting, with a lot of history, beautiful buildings and even some familiar spots like Starbucks and Burger King!

Leaving the harbor tonight in San Juan was absolutely beautiful. Visiting Puerto Rico was a lot of fun and tomorrow is Grand Turk.  I have been told that the beach at Grand Turk is extremely beautiful!  I am looking forward to spending the afternoon on the beach with so much warm sun and perfect weather!

Yesterday we visited St. Thomas.  With all of his beauty, St. Thomas is only 13 miles long and 2.5 miles wide.  In our tour we learned a lot about the native plants and all of their medicinal purposes along with a lot of history about the island.

Tuesday I taught embroidery classes about Working with Stock Designs, Saving time in Design Creation and Working with Small Lettering. Saturday we are having classes about Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Website Creation.

I have really enjoyed teaching the classes. The embroiderers that are on the cruise are such an incredible group of individuals from every walk of life.  They are from all over the US including Alaska and Hawaii and cover so many different niche markets. It has been such a blessing to me to be able to get to know each one of them. I am really looking forward to Saturdays classes.

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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Brenda Adams, one of my students, won a “Monogram Wizard” contest for a pillow that she entered.  This pillow is being featured on the back cover of “Designs In Machine Embroidery” magazine.  Brenda stated that she learned a lot from my Underlay class and applied those skills to designing and sewing out this pillow.

Brenda also took my “How To Create Monograms” class and was very creative in putting this monogram design together for this pillow.  She did a beautiful job and I am so proud of Brenda; this is a huge accomplishment.

The picture on the lower right of the dark gold pillow is Brenda’s.  She was in a fabric store shopping and picked up the magazine and saw her pillow on the back and was extremely surprised and excited.  I cannot even imagine the feelings that she went through when she saw her picture on the back cover of that magazine.

If it had been me, I am sure that everyone in the store would have know about it at the time, but Brenda is not like me, she is a bit more quiet!

I just wanted to share this with everyone. What a way to start off the New Year!   Brenda definitely needs to be congratulated on her accomplishment!

Thank you Brenda for sharing your win with all of us!

Joyce Jagger
Your Embroidery Coach

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This past weekend I had the opportunity to work at a small trade show in Albany, NY with Ken Chadwick that represented the Stahl’s Products line and Jeff Hajenski that represented embroidery and screen printing machines from Hirsch International.

This was an extremely busy show, especially on Saturday, and I had the privilege of visiting with some of the embroiderers that I had trained and it was really exciting listening to them as they were telling me about their success.

I want to tell you about one in particular. Marjorie Corrow, of Life’s A Stitch Embroidery , a single mom with 2 young daughters has been in business 5 years and grew from a single head embroidery shop….. to a 7 head embroidery shop in 4 years. I first met Marjorie when she was working for a Uniform shop as their embroiderer. She was a very ambitious employee and was being held back by her employer in the Uniform shop.

Marjorie was very good at creating something out of nothing and really wanted to start her own embroidery business but was very apprehensive because of the cost of getting started. She also wondered if she really be able to get enough customers to make a living. She was the one that was responsible for herself and her two daughters and her job was their main source of income.

Marjorie was already supplementing her income by making unique bibs , “Bibs That Cover The Whole Kid” and selling them through craft shows. She has since that time added more products to her line for babies and children and now offers all of her unique products with the addition of embroidery.

All that it took for Marjorie to take that leap was a little encouragement. Her business is Life’s A Stitch Embroidery, LLC located in Niskayuna, New York. After working with her software and machine for a while, she called me to teach her how to digitize. She thought that this was could really help her to grow and attract the kind of customer that he was not able to get. I worked with her at her home teaching her how to digitize and gave her some pointers that could help her to increase her production and then again on-line and over the phone helping her to fine tune some issues.

She quickly found herself in the position with more work than she could handle with her single embroidery machine and purchased another single head and then then shortly she had to have another single head embroidery machine. In December of 2006 she purchased a 4 head embroidery machine to add to her 3 single heads.

Marjorie now has employees, has moved her business from her home into a more convenient location for herself and her customers. She was able to purchase another home without selling the one that she was living in. She is now renting that home to one of her employees. Not only is Marjorie a huge embroidery business success, she is a very thoughtful person and wanted her employee to have a nicer place to live and Marjorie was able to provide that for her.

Life’s A Stitch Embroidery is a very growing company and Marjorie still sells her products at craft shows and many other shows and this has really helped her to go gain notoriety and many new customers. She is a full service embroidery business but is still manufacturing a lot of her own products. I am very proud of her and of her embroidery success!

If I have been able to help you, I would love to hear about it. It is such a satisfying feeling knowing that I have been a part of someone else’s embroidery business success!

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