Clients come to Penn & Fletcher in Long Island City, New York, for custom hand and machine embroidery that isn’t readily available from any other source. The company’s years of experience, combined with a highly trained staff of artisans, produces embroideries to suit a wide variety of clients’ individual needs.

Penn & Fletcher has come a long way since 1986, when founder Ernie Smith-who had enjoyed a career as a set, costume, and lighting designer for the theater-wanted to follow a different path by helping costume designers face the challenges of finding fine and unusual laces and trimmings.

For this purpose, he bought some turn-of-the century novelty stitching machines. Sidney Schroeger at Eaves-Brooks, the venerated costume company, taught Ernie how to operate the machines with finesse. Ernie ultimately bought Sidney’s embroidery equipment and started Penn & Fletcher where he continues to produce state-of-the-art embroidery. Go behind the scenes with Kenneth D. King in this article of Threads #167.

WEB EXTRA: How to Embroider Garments like Penn & Fletcher