Since I have been on a sabbatical this year from Red Gingko, I have been thinking a lot about the future of Red Gingko.  I enjoy designing the Red gingko collection and I sell my hand-embroidered jackets at high-end art fairs throughout the year.  However, I am not a natural sales person.  I would like to move the business away from retail. Ultimately, Red Gingko’s mission is to help create job opportunities for women artisans in Southwestern China.  So, I would like to transition the business into a commission based handcrafted embroidery service for other designers.

What makes the Red Gingko embroidery different?  If you carefully inspect the handcrafted embroideries from Red Gingko, you will notice that the artisans use the blanket stitch for majority of the embroidery design. The stitch requires patient skill to keep the design even with a well-defined edge.  Unlike the conventional blanket stitch, the stitches are worked very close together to give the appearance of a satin stitch. Each stitch is linked through the previous one so that the technique creates a line of thread on one side of the embroidery that machine embroidery cannot duplicate.

What also makes the embroidery from Southwestern China particularly unique is that the artisans thread the needle directly on to the fabric with no assistance from an embroidery hoop.  The lack of a frame makes the hand embroidery process much more difficult, particularly if the design is intricate and the fabric is generously embroidered.  If the artisan’s skill falls short, the final fabric will not lay flat but twist.  Consequently, the workmanship, pattern, and fabric are critical to the success of the embroidery piece.  Due to the complexity of Red Gingko designs, I only work with very skilled artisans.