What our Cross Stitch Advent Calendar taught us about personal growth
We make no secret that we love creating our yearly Cross Stitch Advent Calendar for you. There are so many reasons why we love it – from hearing about you taking an hour of me-time every day in the run up to Christmas, to the surprise and joy it brings you, to the lovely community we’ve built around the Advent Calendar. One of the not-so-obvious reasons is that, each year, creating the Cross Stitch Advent Calendar provides us with an opportunity for personal growth.
Each year we have had to overcome some difficulties. Some years more than others. (This year, more than any other – but that’s a story for another time!) We have to find solutions and we have to do it within a budget and always to an immovable deadline. We don’t have any departments that help us with this, so it’s all up to us. We’ve learned a lot, we’ve become ever more resourceful and we’ve grown.
We’ve often alluded to the year of the 2023 Cross Stitch Advent Calendar, when things didn’t go quite to plan. This is a behind the scenes look at what happened and how we dealt with it.
It was all going so well
Annie had come up with the idea of creating some Christmas napkins, with a bit of a twist (not giving too much away here – you never know when this might re-appear!). She’d test stitched the design on pieces of evenweave and found that they worked. This was in January (yes, we do Christmas ALL year round!)
The first problem arose when we learned that the cost of the evenweave per kit would be way too high. So, we started to look at alternatives – these included some pre-packed crafting napkins which we found in the USA. We sent for samples and the napkins we received weren’t the advertised size and therefore not the size we needed. What’s more, where we thought they’d be suitable for stitching on, it appeared that they didn’t come with evenly spaced holes as we’d hoped.
Eventually, we decided to start with the simplest product – the napkin – and find a way to be able to stitch on them. We found a supplier of good quality napkins in the UK and started to look at how we could add the stitching. By this time it was early March.
We started with waste canvas, but the removal of this proved tricky, particularly in the ‘hour a day’ timeframe. Then we found soluble canvas – this was better. We found some in Annie’s craft stash in a pack with a couple of small pieces of pink coloured canvas which was visible enough to stitch through. But when we came to look at buying some, the only type available was clear – it was really difficult to see where you were stitching. In small packs it was expensive, but probably just about do-able and we started searching to see if we could find an alternative supplier where we could buy in bulk. We were now towards the end of April.
While Alison was going through the test stitching process, she was getting more and more uneasy about something, but couldn’t put her finger on what.
In June, when we’re normally sending our finished piece and packaging off to our photographer to have their moment of glory, Alison told Annie that she didn’t think it was going to work. It was going to be too difficult for people to stitch within an hour, it was going to be a frustrating experience.
Disaster!
Or at least potential disaster. We had a few options:
- Carry on, hope that it wasn’t too difficult for people but risk producing what we thought was a sub-standard product.
- Stop and don’t produce an advent calendar
- Come up with a different design and do it fast and well
The first two, in our eyes, were non-options. We had to PIVOT!
The new rules were:
- Make it simple enough to write instructions for
- Make it about the stitching
- Make it with materials that we already knew we could source
That was Tuesday. By the end of the following week, between us, we’d designed and stitched a 3D gingerbread house and had met to put it together and send it off to our photographer.
It came together remarkably quickly and felt good and comparatively stress free. And it was really cute!
We still had a lot to do but by this time the rest of the process was known to us because we used everything we’d learnt from our 2022 Cross Stitch Advent Calendar, as we’d kept it simple. We even managed to improve on our packing process to minimise errors.
Do we ever want it to happen again? No.
Do we regret the experience? Also no.
It taught us some valuable lessons, and it provided us with a whole lot of personal development. Here’s what we do differently every day in our business and our personal lives as a result of this one pivot:
- Strip it back – do it in the simplest way possible and only then add layers of complexity
- Start, make it, then make it perfect
- We can do hard things – particularly if we really want the result
- Take failure quickly and move past it – don’t get hung up on it, never bother with allocating blame – it’s a waste of time and energy
- Learn from everything (and make notes)
- Listen to our instincts and don’t push them down
Those of you who have stitched our 2024 Cross Stitch Advent Calendar will know that the napkins finally came to be. But, because of what we’d learned, these were in a simpler, more stripped-back version than the original intent.
As we move towards the finishing line (for us) of our 2025 Cross Stitch Advent Calendar, having overcome more hurdles than ever before, we know that this valuable me-time activity for our customers will continue to provide personal growth in many and unexpected ways for us, for years to come!
love Annie x