Donna's Story

Donna with Chester, her Shih Tzu!

Donna Vermillion Giampa, the designer of the Vermillion Stitchery, was born in Long Beach, California, one minute before twin sister, Diana. Donna is the oldest of four daughters. She graduated from CSCLB in 1969 and married her husband Anthony, a fellow Art Major in college the same year. They have four children, Lisa, 30, Rob, 25, Kris, 23, and Anthony, 20 and live in Irvine, California.

Donna, the designer, and Diana, the CPA, run the Vermillion Stitchery with the help of Anthony, to provide needleworkers with the counted cross stitch designs, in chartpak form, shown here on our web site. Most of these designs are available as complete kits from the Janlynn Corporation. We welcome you to read Donna's story below.

As a child my mother was always working on some kind of needlework which included sewing, knitting, and embroidery. I remember her stitching some of Elsa Williams wonderful crewel kits. She taught all of us to do the basics. One of our projects to which we all contributed, was a granny afghan which took several years of creating the crochet squares in garish colored yarns!

My sister and I sewed most of our clothes in high school. I always loved being able to choose the patterns for our dresses and select the "perfect" colors and fabrics. We also had more clothes that way--you could really save money by sewing. I always was making crafty things throughout my childhood including such beauties as applique on burlap, adding touches of embroidery with knitting yarn--coarse but fun!

During my teenage years, I worked in my father's drugstore and my favorite task was refilling the Hallmark card racks. I just loved those beautiful cards and dreamed about designing them myself. In college I switched from being an English major to an Art major midstream when I realized how much more creating artwork appealed to me than teaching or literature. Once I'd made that decision, I devoted myself to learning as much as I could through my art classes. During college, I made a few extra cents by making and selling tissue paper flowers at my father's store. One of my parents' greatest fears was that this art career, making tissue paper flowers would not be a career which would support me in the "real" world! But they held their tongues and hoped I wasn't going to squander my life away in poverty and tissue paper!  

After college, I worked in graphic design at several jobs but decided I wanted to do full color work and applied for a job at Buzza Cardozo, a greeting card company in nearby Anaheim, CA. I showed my portfolio of designs, and prepared a couple of greeting card samples, and was hired by the promise my work showed. I learned greeting card painting techniques on the job and loved the work. At the time, I was one of the two or three artists who could do embroidery and did quite a few embroidered cards and gift wraps, learning stitches as I went along. Cross Stitch wasn't even done then, it was mainly crewel type embroidery.

Once I began having my own family, I continued working at home, doing freelance projects and learning needlepoint and specialty techniques that intrigued me. For awhile I learned how to run a knitting machine and made clothes for my baby boys with cute motifs and bright colors. I thought I might go into children's clothing design for awhile.

When I lost my mother, on Christmas Eve, who died suddenly of a stroke caused by a birth defect, unknown to any of us, I realized that you never know what may happen. I decided to plunge ahead to do what I'd wanted to do for several years--create needlework kits. In 1980, my husband and I started The Vermillion Stitchery with a small ad in a popular needlework magazine offering of all things, Silk & Metal Thread ornament kits and a Cross Stitch Nativity set--my first Cross Stitch project. We began our company right at the time the Cross Stitch resurgence was beginning. We quickly found Cross Stitch was The Thing to do and realized that Silk & Metal Thread work was too complicated for the average stitcher and would have to wait!

The Vermillion Stitchery required a great deal of work besides designing and I found I needed more time for the creative aspects of my work and decided to return to free lance design work. I have since done many projects for many companies and grown in my love of the craft through the years. I've enjoyed seeing the stitchers' skills improve along with mine. Their desire for more challenging pieces has enabled me to grow in my design work.

My favorite subject is probably Christmas. There's something very special about the holiday season to me, having lost my mother at this time of year. She always loved the holidays and made them very special for all of us. I miss her more at this time and maybe doing special designs for the holidays makes me feel closer to her. Also, the gorgeous bright Christmas colors have always been favorites, as the color in my designs is the main focus of them all.

In addition to holiday subjects, I love anything that'S rich and beautiful. I love cats and birds for their textures, flowers for their lovely shapes. It's fun to research subjects, learning something new, seeing things closely and studying the shapes and textures of their forms. Translating them to cross stitch is like a little exploration on a new path, the end of which I can work towards and hope the design ends up where I want it to!