Does Christmas Really Matter?

This is an extract from our Studio Dispatch from 3rd October 2025.

At the end of August, writing this, I feel a strong sense of déjà vu - the same sinking realisation I had when I wrote about preparing (or rather, not preparing) for maternity leave. Except this time, it’s not the baby I’m unready for, it’s Christmas.

It’s the end of August, September looms next week, and for the past couple of weeks my inbox has been filling with emails from journalists asking about my “upcoming launches” and “new Christmas imagery.” To which I have absolutely nothing to reply with. The truth is painfully clear to me and to my team: we are categorically, unmistakably, not ready for Christmas. Not from an operational perspective – that we are completely comfortable with – but from a “newness” perspective.

Every year, I imagine the version of Christmas that a small business like ours is supposed to have. You know the one: launches all ready to go by May, photography wrapped up, press materials sent out by the end of June, in the hopes of making it into the glossy mags in November and December. Perhaps a flurry of festive workshops lined up, maybe a fun event or two. One year we even managed an entire week of winter workshops with different creatives - it was really amazing – two different artists each day in the studio teaching classes - every year since I’ve thought, “Oh yes, we’ll do that again.” And every year, reality lands and I realise: no, we absolutely will not. We simply don’t have the time, the staff, or frankly, the energy to pull it off.

This year, of course, the reality has been turned up a notch because I also have a six-week-old baby. I knew back in May that I wasn’t prepared for Christmas, but at that point I was consumed by everything else the business needed before I disappeared for maternity leave. I had an idea that once she arrived I would start prepping for those Christmas launches, but, as I wrote about here, that did not happen.

It’s not that we’re short on ideas - quite the opposite. We have five major launches in the pipeline, all of which, if I do say so myself, are very good ideas. Some collaborations, some new kits, some completely different things. But all of them need time, care and focus, and that’s not something you can do in snatched half-hours between naps. Likewise all of them need my attention – so as much as the team are on top of things, this is something they can’t easily help with. With embroidery kits, if I rush the design stage, we waste months down the line once the pieces are stitched, which could have been solved if I just spent a little bit more time at the beginning getting it right. And if we rush that stage, then the risk is our customers waste their time, too. That’s not what The Fabled Thread is about.

And the truth is, since Sasha arrived, I don’t have time, and I certainly don’t have the headspace. I keep telling myself I’ll manage a bit here and there, but every time I try, it’s clear that what I’d produce would be a bodge job - something patched together in the cracks. And that’s not the way we work. Which leaves us here: not ready, not polished, and not at all what I’d imagined we would be for Christmas. The question though is… does it matter?