The company's mission revolves around keeping the enjoyment in stitching. Of course, their products are of the highest quality, and each is hand machined of the most appropriate materials. Appreciating the fact that the satisfaction found in any artistic endeavor is greatly affected by the quality of the materials and tools used, Evertite Stitchery Frames set out to make sure the tools they create would enhance the stitchers' experience.

What makes Evertite Stretcher Bars so different is they have an adjustment mechanism in each end of each bar. This mechanism allows the stitcher great control over the tension of their ground with adjustment both top to bottom and left to right.

History:
Evan Burroughs' mom Margaret has been involved in various needle arts for as long as he can remember. Early memories include seeing her knit, sew and crochet. Along the way she picked up needlepoint and weaving as outlets for her artistic talents.

end view showing size stamp, socket for adjusting tool, and
base of adjuster bearing on adjacent bar

Evan also remembers that she had an on-going problem maintaining a satisfactory tension in her needlepoint canvas. When on stretcher bars, the canvas would sag over time and have to be removed and reinstalled. Scroll frames would provide tension in only one direction unless the sides were laced (which took away from stitching time!), and the roller bars in the scroll frames would slip, relaxing the tension that direction. All this added up to a less than satisfactory stitching experience.

In 2001, Evan (at the time, a designer of antenna support structures for the radio communications industry), his mom and dad Henry, put their heads together to come up with a solution. They went through many iterations (some of which would have made Rube Goldberg proud), and settled on a concept Margaret had devised.

After working all the manufacturing bugs out of the process by using the tools in Evan's woodshop, Margaret introduced the design to the members of her stitching guilds. The feedback of her fellow stitchers was incorporated into further refinements of the stretcher bar system. In 2002, they applied for a patent.

Today and Tomorrow:
The family continues to manage and operate the enterprise. Even with the increased demand, every frame is touched by every member of the family.

Throughout the day, Margaret may be running the sawmill, the chop saw, either of the table saws, the pneumatically controlled router or the center marking iron. Henry is running the joiner or the logo branding iron. After spending each day as a full-time survey analyst tracking down highway right-of-way boundaries and creating digital terrain models of project areas as an employee of the Oregon Department of Transportation, Evan comes home to run the planer and the molder and do any maintenance the equipment requires. While all this is going on, Bonnie (the voice on the phone when you call Evertite Stitchery Frames) is sanding the bars, putting together the adjusting mechanisms, doing the final assembly and quality checks, packaging the bars and packing them for shipment.

They say they are still enjoying the work. Evan does admit, however, that his time is ever-tite, and they plow all their profits back into the business. As with the needlepoint frames themselves, the tools used to make them also need to be kept to the highest standards. Evertite Stitchery is ever-upgrading their own equipment to ensure they can continue to offer quality and service to their valued customers, and a little more fun.