Embroidery business teaches Hoosier students lessons

By Wayne Tompkins
wtompkins@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

ELIZABETH, Ind. -- There's a massive renovation project going on at South Central Junior/Senior High School. But amid the usual pounding and grinding of machinery, the discerning listener hears a sound curiously out of place: the gentle whirring of an embroidery machine.

Off in a corner of the Harrison County campus, teacher Barbara Kendall and a handful of teen-age volunteers are keeping the machine -- and a small, 2-year-old, student-run embroidery business called Threads -- busy.

''This is a personal dream, because I've always sewed,'' said Kendall, who teaches what used to be called home economics, now rechristened Family and Consumer Science. Students make and sell embroidered apparel. Prices start at $3 for the simplest embroidery and rise according to the design and amount of color involved. The proceeds go to local scholarship funds.

The students are not paid, but they earn ''service hours'' that can also be applied to scholarships, while learning the basics of running a business.

The school-sponsored business education project has grown to about $10,000 in annual sales. And Threads is different from similar efforts because it's a continuously operating business, where needle and thread still work their magic even in the sticky heat of the Ohio Valley summer and the surrounding chaos of construction.

''I make Christmas presents for our family. I learn about handling money and dealing with people, stuff like that,'' said Ashleigh Stewart, 15, who will start her freshman year at South Central in the fall. ''Sometimes people are hard to deal with. And taking orders, you have to be very precise.''

Kendall launched Threads through a $6,650 grant from the Harrison County Community Foundation, which was created by county commissioners with a $5 million donation from Caesars Indiana. The sprawling Bridgeport gaming complex contributes part of its adjusted gross receipts to the foundation each month.

Income from the foundation finances philanthropic projects in the county. The foundation's market value, through donations and investments, has grown to just under $18 million, with more than $4.6 million in grants awarded since its 1996 founding.

Steve Gilliland, the foundation's executive director, said he likes the idea that Threads has used its grant money to generate income on its own.

''We're also thrilled that they are using some of their generated income to provide some scholarships,'' Gilliland said. ''And the students can see the ways productivity can bring money in.''

Kendall's grant paid for two computerized, commercial embroidery machines costing $2,300 each and the software to run them.

''As sewing machines became more modern, I saw these and thought, 'Oh my gosh,' '' Kendall said. ''If you really love to sew, there's just such a wealth. We used to do all this by hand. Now we're talking minutes instead of hours.''

The machines can sew several preprogrammed stitches and embroidery patterns at the touch of a button. Stitches and embroidery patterns can even be downloaded onto a computer disc, which the embroidery machine uses to create the pattern.

Because the business is in a school, its overhead is low, about $50 a month for thread and $200 a year for maintenance on the machines, Kendall estimates.

Kendall, who has at least 12 students working for the business at any given time, said even this modest enterprise has its challenges. The hightech sewing machines have spent stretches of time in repair shops; she once accidentally sewed her finger -- ''a strange experience''; and demand for Threads' products is outstripping its production capacity. In fact, to get ahead of seasonal demand, Christmas products are rolling off Threads' line in midsummer.

''We need to expand,'' Kendall said. ''I've tried to write more grants. We don't know where we're going next -- we're learning as we go. I'm attending some small-business classes just to be a little more knowledgeable.''

The next step, she said, may be upgrading to heavier industrial machines in the $15,000 to $20,000 range, to produce a higher volume of embroidered T-shirts, polo shirts, jackets, shorts, blankets, sweat shirts and pillows.

One of the things students already are learning is the basics of running a business.

''They learn marketing, advertising; they learn about cooperation and sales,'' Kendall said. She's also planning to send several students to the Southern Indiana Chamber of Commerce's Youth Entrepreneur Success camp later this summer.

Her students go on the road a few times a year to sell the business's wares, but Kendall has not advertised, because ''people are finding us,'' and several people per day call to ask about the business's services.

''Athletics and school spirit items are very popular,'' Kendall said.

While few if any of Kendall's students are planning careers in the clothing industry, the business does give students a chance to develop other business and artistic skills. One way Kendall recruits boys is by offering the chance to learn computer skills, such as digitized design.

Taking a photograph or other artwork, digitizing software can turn a computerized embroidery machine into a needle-and-thread version of a dot-matrix printer, telling the machine what thread color to select and where to place the stitches on the garment. Within minutes, the artwork is embroidered.

That's where incoming freshman Aaron Tuell has shone.

''I just kind of came here because it's something different,'' he said. For one of his projects, he took a photograph of a car his aunt had entered in a car show and scanned it into a computer. ''Then I put it through Abode Photoshop and we digitized it and sewed it onto a shirt.''

He used the same process to embroider a Volkswagen Beetle onto a garment.

''Designing is more computer-related,'' Kendall said. ''Aaron doesn't have to sew, but he knows how.''

Adds Aaron: ''We also get to deal with money and take down orders. It helps you learn how to manage.''