We’re Just Kitting….

Right before we launch any kit, fun things happen here in the Studio.

I’ll walk you through some of the excitement, and we’ll talk about how things are a little different for the upcoming Harvest Hues stitch-along kit, compared to previous kits we’ve recently released.

The kits for the Stitch Snippet stitch along projects that we’ve been working on together for the past several years have all the components in them that you need to complete the stitch-along project.

For Harvest Hues – our autumn stitch-along project that releases very soon and that we talked about here – the kit contents includes five cut pieces of fabric (a fine embroidery linen for the embroidery ground fabric, the non-woven interfacing for finishing, and three colors of wool-blend felt), eight full skeins of DMC stranded cotton, a tube of lovely sparkly beads, three pieces of cut wire, and the required embroidery needles mounted on a ribboned card.

Anna, who is the Queen of Keeping Things Organized and the Master of All Things Kitted and the Guru of Packaging Methods, populates the place with checklists, to make sure no detail is overlooked.

She organizes the kitting space, which is the top of one of these tables, raised up to a standing position.

Everything gets stacked on the table in the order in which the kit is assembled.

As each kit is assembled, each element is stacked in a particular order to show off the contents to their best advantage.

We start with the fabric…

…and on top of the fabric, we arrange the smaller elements – like the beads, the cut wires…

…the needle card, and each skein of floss.

With Stitch Snippet kits in the past, we’ve always weighed out our beads and made up our own small packages. Purchasing loose beads in bulk results in a more affordable price for the beads, even when it comes to the time it takes to package them. For this project and the timing of it (and the quantity of beads needed for it), we crunched the numbers and decided that it just made more sense to provide full tubes of beads that we purchased pre-packaged.

As it worked out, though, we weren’t able to purchase a large enough quantity of the pre-packaged tubes to meet our kitting needs. So we ended up having to weigh beads for about 10 kits. Some kits, then, will have the beads in small bags – it’s the same amount of beads, just bagged instead of tubed.

We slide the tidily stacked kit contents into the cellophane envelope, label the kit, and placed it in a tub, ready to ship.

For those of you who have purchased my regular, larger project kits from Needle ‘n Thread – like Leafy Tree and Thousand Flowers – you have probably noticed that they come in branded boxes, with the kit contents wrapped in tissue paper with brand stickers.

We strive to keep costs down with the stitch-along kits and make them a little more budget-friendly, so that’s the main reason why they’re packaged in clear cellophane rather than in branded boxes.

As you can see, we package each kit with the same personal care, of course!

While we’re kitting, we don’t stack everything on the table – we work in batches, which helps us keep track of numbers more easily.

Besides, everything wouldn’t fit on the table!

After cutting all the felt pieces, for example, they get stacked in a very large tub. We take out what we need for each batch of kits.

All the boxes of threads are squirreled away in tubs under tables, to help save us some space.

You know the wall we’re working behind right now, that I wrote about here? Besides eliminating all natural light in our work space (insert distressed emoji face here!), it eliminates a bit of square footage that we are used to having.

And that brings me to kit quantities.

With Harvest Hues, we’re cutting back a little bit on kit quantities. With previous stitch-along kits lately, we’ve been over-producing so that we don’t have to do second runs of kits when we sell out. That plan has worked pretty well. No one who has wanted a kit for any of this year’s stitch-alongs has been disappointed.

But now we’ve had to cut our production quantity back a little bit due to space restrictions. Aargh! It’s not the best scenario for any small business – especially in the last quarter of the year – but we’re just doing what we can do and hoping that we’re not making any remarkably bad decisions.

When Will We Launch the Kit?

We’ll be launching these kits next week, towards the beginning of the week. Hopefully that will be Monday or Tuesday morning. Yes, we are still waiting on One Thread, but it is supposed to arrive today. We’ve been able to package about 1/5th of the kits, so the other 4/5ths should go quickly, as long as the thread arrives as expected.

The fun never ends!

Truth is, I cannot wait to get the kit launched so we can actually start stitching on Harvest Hues together!

And I can’t wait to show you the pennant banner (and other things) that we’ve put together with these leaves. So fun!

Stay tuned – there’s more ahead!