This week we welcomed Caroline Cranley and Deborah O'Brien from Appletons Wool to our new studio.
The duo have been on a tour of clients this month and dropped in, to discuss how we could better align our businesses, while taking a peek at our set up in in our brand spanking new studio.
Appletons Wool, which is owned and run by Diana Cawdron from their Buckinghamshire headquarters, was established in 1835 by Thomas Appleton for the manufacture of worsted lace and epaulettes for military. The connection with military uniforms has since been phased out and in recent years the company has turned its focus to embroidery and tapestry wool, becoming one of the largest names globally in the supply of high-quality wool yarn for tapestry and crewel work.
Our wools come in over 420 colours and these colours are identical in crewel and tapestry. Crewel wool has been used for a thousand years but became most popular in the seventeenth century. Since then it was famously used by William Morris and in several famous tapestries including the completion of the Bayeaux Tapestry and the recent Great Tapestry of Scotland which contained over 300 miles of Appletons crewel wool and has gone on display in Galashiels.
All our wool is British from sheep to needle – it comes from the Yorkshire wool markets and is also dyed and spun in Yorkshire. The furthest it travels is from Yorkshire to Buckinghamshire before being shipped to you.
Diana Cawdron - Appletons Wool
Diana and Phillipa's business relationship goes back a long way, right back to the establishment of the Crewel Work Company in 1993 when Phillipa selected Appletons to be the exclusive supplier of wool for her kits due to their top quality, sustainably-sourced British wool fibre, historically-accurate colour range, and dedication to excellence in the supply of embroidery materials to clients such as us.
We haven't looked back and today you can find the same gorgeous range of wools in all of our Crewel Work kits.
In recent years the Appletons team have ventured in to their own range of needlepoint kits, with a number of exciting collaborations, and have expanded their range wools to include a number of beautiful new colours. You can access Appletons Wool today through a network of online shops and physical stores both in the UK and around the world. If your local needlework shop doesn't yet supply Appletons Wool, do get in touch with the team and suggest it to them!
We're looking forward to many more years of business with Appletons by our side and can't wait to see what this nearly 200 year old British company does next.
