Stitching Success: The couple behind many Tarleton graduation stoles

BY JOLEE SKINNER / Editor in Chief

The 2024 graduation season is here. High school and college students are getting ready to walk across the stage and receive their diploma. Many of the students graduating this semester at Tarleton State University have accomplished so much in just four years. Tarleton athletes received trophies and medals, students made it to the Dean’s or President’s list for their grades, some students received their white coats for nursing or some students became president in their clubs or chapters. 

Whatever the accomplishment, Tarleton students have so much to be proud of and a popular tradition at Tarleton is students embroider their accomplishments onto their graduation stole. But who designs these stoles? Well, many Tarleton students chose “In Stitches” to embroider their stoles. 

“In Stitches” is owned and operated by Gil and Susan Ayers. Gil and Susan bought “In Stitches” Oct. 1, 2019, after their daughter came across an advertisement one day on Facebook Marketplace.

“I still had my job in Fort Worth and my husband worked for, at that point, the county,” Ayers said. “I’m not a real big risk taker but decided to check into it for some reason.”

Susan at the time was working for PDX which was a pharmacy software development company. Eventually, the company was sold and Susan was laid off. But decided to ride with her daughter down to Stephenville to check the business out.

“I had never had anything to do with embroidery but I love art and crafts and all that sort of stuff,” Ayers said. 

Growing up in Jacksboro, Texas, Susan’s mom was an oil painter and taught art lessons and her dad was the local telephone man. Susan said her first job at 15 years old was at a restaurant taking orders at the window. 

“My mom and dad, they were very hard workers, me and my sisters went to work pretty early,” Ayers said. “It was just something our family always did.”

Susan reflected and said her mother told her growing up that at 15 you could either work in their garden or get a job.

“It was her way, you know, making sure that we were responsible,” Ayers said.

Susan graduated from Jacksboro high school with only 43 people in it. Then decided to go to Texas A&M University for college but then transferred to Tarleton State University. Susan said she decided to transfer because she just felt like a number on a big campus. 

“It was big compared to where I was from,” Ayers said. “That's why I ended up leaving.”

Susan majored in general business at Texas A&M and then transferred into a double major in general business and marketing at Tarleton. 

“I had always been interested in business classes, we had one in high school, and I always loved doing that more than anything,” Ayers said. “ I just wanted to work, I’m really sure where that came from but it was just something I really wanted to do.”

Susan and her family ended up moving to Stephenville after she and her husband had bought “In Stitches” from Sylvia Smith, the previous owner. Susan said the business was and is only an embroidery business.

“She [Smith] never did stoles at all, she mostly did shirts and jackets,” Ayers said. “At some point somebody was wanting a stole done and we were just doing regular embroidery and stuff. It's just kinda grown from there.”

Susan said “In Stitches” is still mostly embroidering business based logos on jackets and shirts. She said they also do athletic bags for Henderson Junior High. The stole’s have become more recently popular requests from them.

“I just kinda started doing these [stole’s] and it takes a lot more design work, obviously, because I have to spend the time to design every one of them,” Ayers said. “It's sort of like an art project to me in a way. I really like creating and embroidering the stole designs for such a special time in someone’s life.”

Susan said she has lost count of how many stole’s they have gotten this semester. 

“I’ve taken in a lot of stole’s, I don't know how many we’ve done,” Ayers said. 

When asked how the business grew so quickly, Susan said it's really been through customers recommending them to other people.

“A lot of it's just been referral business,” Ayers said. “We didn’t really try to build the business a whole lot in the beginning just cause we really didn’t know what we were doing exactly. It takes a lot of research.”

Susan said Smith, the previous owner, did help them a lot but then Smith had other things going on.

“It’s been a long learning curve, especially when you have different kinds of materials and products,” Ayers said. 

Susan talked about the creative process behind making the stole’s. When a customer approaches them with a stole, Susan doesn’t limit herself on what they can do. Susan uses a program to design what people want on their stole. Susan is able to take any logo or design and can even re-create a particular logo onto a stole.

“I just try to do anything that anybody wants,” Ayers said. “A lot of people are creative enough to get a stole on an app or something. Whenever I get it, I try to do it kinda like what they want it and then sometimes I’ll sometimes give them another option.”

Once a design is finalized, Susan gets the design approved by the customer before the stole goes under the machines. Then design goes into the machines then sewn onto the stole. Susan sets the settings on the machines for each individual stole.

“I have to go in and manually set all the settings to make it look good, because if it doesn’t have enough stitches, it just looks real sparse,” Ayers said. “And if it has too many then it's gonna look real bulky.” 

When asked about any particular stole’s that they’ve done that stand out, Susan mentioned a student who asked for something she thought was unique. 

“One girl, she just had names and dates put on there and I was like ‘what is this?’ and it was all the people in her family that had graduated from Tarleton and the years they had graduated,” Ayers said. “It is always kind of interesting to see.”

When asked what advice she would give to a new business owner or someone who wants to start a business, Susan emphasized having a CPA or someone to help with bookkeeping and to have a plan. 

“Set up a good working plan for all your bookkeeping because I think that’s where most small businesses struggle,” Ayers said. “And have to have a business plan in place before you buy a business or create a business.”

Susan and her husband are happy to have a good successful business that they feel was led to them.

“We do feel that God led us to buy this business, there is no other explanation for the way it all worked out,” Ayers said. “We are very happy to have a successful family business that can bring people’s vision to fruition.”