Kari Tansill and The Old Button Jar
We are proud to offer embroidery from artist/craftsperson Kari Tansill in our museum gift shop. She brought us a sample a year ago and we have been hooked ever since. Also emerging from the intricate, exquisite embroidery is a shared mission that brings a message of hope and love to recipients and others.
Her son was four years old twenty years ago when she started embroidery. She enjoyed the craft and had thought about doing more with it, but her work as an assistant loan officer for a local mortgage company kept her busy. The first of several significant losses, her mom passed away in 2020. Then, during the pandemic, the business was sold, the new owners had their own employees, and she and her boss were laid off. During this transition period her children, knowing her enthusiasm for embroidery, encouraged her. Her dad also supported her with advice to start her own business. She hurdled the decision to buy her first big embroidery machine a couple months before her father passed away.
When the machine arrived, it was crated on a big truck and so heavy that it required a crew of men to unload and position. The transition from one needle to a 15-needle embroidery machine was a huge boost to her business. This machine meant that she could turn out large orders quickly for the convenience of clients. It would alert her with beeps for needed attention and service, and let her spend more time in the creative work she loved. It meant that she could use up to 15 different colors at one time without having to change the bobbins for each color.
Then during the past year, Kari’s brother passed away from cancer, and in her grief Kari resolved to do something in his honor in Clackamas County. Her brother had a hard life from the start. He was adopted at birth, then both his adoptive parents died. He came to her family at ten years old.
“I remember thinking how scary it must be to go to a family with two girls and a mom and dad you had never met before,” she said. “He was my motivation.”
She thought about what she could do for children in similar circumstances and put an ad on a Facebook page asking for blankets for kids from newborn to age 18 who were going into the foster care system for the first time, some with just the clothes on their backs. Her idea was to embroider each child’s name on an individually-chosen blanket so the child could carry something personal, secure, and comforting into the unease of a new situation.
The response was astounding.
“I had a ton of blankets,” she said. My Father’s House in Gresham and other sources donated so many quilts and blankets that “Now it’s not a need for me to stop at kids just entering the system,” Kari said. If a child is already in the system and wants a blanket, she can provide one.
Within the last couple of months she has added another embroidery machine: this time a 10-needle Baby Lock which is built to be tough and can run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is much more user-friendly and will let her know through a phone app when a needle breaks or a bobbin runs out of thread. The machine uses a USB stick. The machine uses hoops from as small as five inches to the size of the whole back of a large biker jacket, or about 18 to 24 inches, and uses stabilizers and magnets.
While Kari offers some of her work in the museum gift shop, other product samples may be seen at goimagine, an online store smaller than Etsy. She chose them “because 100% of profits they earn goes to childrens’ charities. Shop with a purpose. One hundred percent of profits go to help children in need.”
Business gmail: theoldbuttonjar@gmail.com
