In a makeshift studio tucked in the guest room of her family home, 25-year-old Rachel Brady sits at a long table with rows of colorful paints stacked neatly beside her.
Mesh needlepoint canvases are tacked to the wall behind her. One canvas reads “I could be a lot meaner” in looping cursive letters. Another canvas reads, “I’m not one to judge, but…”
These “sassy sayings,” are part of Brady’s southern collection of handpainted needlepoint designs, a business venture sparked just two months ago after Brady picked up her first-ever needlepoint project.
“I just thought, ‘That looks fun. We’ll try it,’” Brady said, thinking back to when she first picked up the hobby. “Then there were a lot of canvases that I wanted to buy, but they’re so expensive, so I decided I would just paint my own.”
Brady quickly began painting her own designs onto canvases, and at the urging of her mother, she began selling them to the local needlepoint group her mother belonged to.
Two months later, her business, RB Needlepoint, has already brought in more than $2,000 in sales.
By day, Brady works remotely as a social media manager and project management assistant for a marketing firm in New Orleans. By night, she’s painting dot by dot on large, mesh canvases.
“I’ve always had a side hustle, whether that’s babysitting, or I did a lot of … dog sitting in New York,” Brady said. “I just needed something to do outside of marketing.”
Brady, who is from Columbus, graduated Tulane University in 2022 with two degrees in marketing and digital media design. After graduating, she moved to New York where she worked at various marketing and sales firms, but after two years and a few “heartbreaks,” she decided it was time to come home.
But the heartbreaks Brady experienced in New York are partly what inspired her to start her own business.
“I had such difficulties surviving layoffs or failed companies, … and it’s just such a hard battle for so many people my age and older,” Brady said. “Several people on Tiktok are (saying) to just start your own business, so I was like, ‘OK, we’ll see how it goes.’”
With her background in marketing, Brady quickly recognized a market for southern-themed needlepoint designs.
“The epicenter of needlepoint is on the East Coast,” Brady said. “So New York, Cape Cod, Newport, Connecticut, everything is centered towards them … but there really is a good market in the South.”
Penny Linn Designs, an East Coast needlepoint canvas company run by Krista LeRay, serves as Brady’s biggest inspiration. Penny Linn canvases are handpainted with blue and white designs, nautical sayings, sailboats and lobster rolls.
Brady has taken to mirroring these designs for a southern audience, trading in crisp blue and white lines for green and white designs and exchanging lobster rolls and sail boats for plates of fried catfish and chicken. And of course, Brady has her own collection of sassy sayings.
Making the canvases, though, is no small feat. Brady first creates the designs digitally. Then, she props up her iPad and handpaints the designs onto mesh canvases, one dot at a time.
A single project for Brady can take anywhere between an hour to an entire week to complete, and prices range from $20 to $300, depending on size and complexity.
“There’s just a lot of cost that gets built into it,” Brady said. “So it’s not super expensive to put paint on canvas, but you have to build a business around this,” Brady said. “It’s all about your margins. … Everything I make with the needlepoint business goes straight back into it.”
Brady has dubbed her mother, Jennifer Brady, as RB Needlepoint’s chief marketing officer.
“I call her that because she always has ideas for new designs,” Brady said. “… Some I take and some I don’t, but she’s kind of my marketing guru.”
Jennifer, who has been needlepointing for about a year, said she supports her daughter’s entrepreneurial spirit.
“I thought it was a great idea,” Jennifer Brady said. “… It was a niche that needed to be filled in this area, and to be able to create unique canvases for people is such a wonderful idea.”
Brady said her biggest goal is to have her own needlepoint store and a million dollars in sales – something she hopes to achieve in as little as four years.
“I’m not there yet,” Brady said, laughing.
Before she gets that far ahead, Brady first hopes to expand her client base. Right now, Brady’s sales are made by word of mouth and through her RB Needlepoint Facebook page, though she plans to begin making appearances at local art and farmers’ markets.
“I have a long list of things I need to do, but right now, I am selling locally,” Brady said. “I’m doing smaller things that are easy to pump out … mini trunk shows, (showing) up to my church, stuff like that.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 44 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
