Founded on hope

Embroidery and Patches didn’t start out as a business plan. It started as a way for Carissa to stay sane during a tough season. She was sick with a mysterious illness and taught herself hand embroidery to keep her mind off the unknown. She took a chance and put it on Etsy, not thinking anything would happen. A few best-seller listings shortly after happily proved her wrong.

After her first wholesale order came in, she sprained both wrists from hand-embroidering 12 hours a day. Her husband said, “You’re buying an embroidery machine.” So she did. One hobby machine quickly became three. Two years later, those three hobby machines became a three-head, 60-needle commercial machine. And that’s not the last upgrade. As the shop keeps growing, she expects to add even more machines to keep up.

What started as hand-embroidered wall art made to keep her sanity during a health crisis grew into a business that’s gone viral more than once. Most memorably, she created patches worn by thousands of customers creating outfits for Eras Tour concert shows across 21 different countries.

Carissa is living proof that a painful season can turn into a success story. While the shop does use embroidery machines, they’re run by human hands. Every out-of-place thread is trimmed by hand. The fabric and patches are hand-cut, and the quality control is driven by Carissa’s perfectionism (her downfall, everyone else’s gain).