Patchwork Castle began back in 2011 as a spark of an idea.
Grasping the opportunity to leave her career in the civil service, Chris set about launching
a small business that would allow her to spend the day creating beautiful things that bring people joy, and be around when the children returned from school to continue making their own family memories.
Patchwork Castle grasped the opportunity to bring the world of patchwork quilting from baby clothes to the UK market – one of a very tiny number of businesses to offer this at that time. The business quickly grew, expanding into memorial quilts and quilts from adult clothing. By the end of 2012, we had great reviews, significant repeat business and a minimum 6 month waiting list – and things stayed that way for much of the last ten years.
In 2018, Chris moved back into employment and Millie joined the business as a partner and has led on the creation of all the beautiful keepsakes since this time.
Over the last twelve years, the opportunities for people to reach a wide audience across the online crafting and creative marketplace have expanded massively. Over that time, many, many more memory quilt makers have appeared, from a couple of larger companies, to hundreds of smaller suppliers selling across Etsy, Facebook and independent websites. This is really wonderful for the opportunities it gives people to build their own small business or just make a few extra pounds, but it’s competitive out there and only getting harder each year to stay visible in a saturated market.
For both of us, our real passion has always sat with providing a great service to our customers, developing great products and creating beautiful keepsakes from your treasured clothes. Keeping Patchwork Castle viable would require a huge investment of time and energy in marketing, which neither of us are excited by.
We’ve entered 2023 with only a handful of active orders and enquiries in the pipeline, and so we’ve made the hard, sad but ultimately positive decision to wind down the business this year. We both feel it’s time to move on to the next adventure!
What will happen next
In the first instance, we will be accepting further orders up until the end of February 2023. We will then need your clothes to be with us as soon as you can, and within 4 weeks of your order confirmation at the very latest.
Estimated delivery will depend on the number of orders we receive (you’ll be able to see the current turnaround time at the top of the home page, and we will confirm this with you when you order). There will be a limit to the number of orders we are able to take, so please order as soon as you can to be sure of a space.
We hope this will give an opportunity for anyone who has active enquiries with us, or who has been considering ordering to get their keepsake made.
Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the last 12 years. Here’s to one final hurrah!
Millie and Chris xx
Owners, Patchwork Castle
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