Carol Beck doesn’t even pretend that her creations come from any particular vision or tap into any time-tested market niche.

She just knows they’re different, and that’s the difference.

“They stand out,” said Beck, who makes patterns for needlepoint and cross-stitch out of her home in northwest Lawrence. “They’re whimsical. Off-the-wall. Light-hearted. Very colorful, with vibrant colors. …

“And now they’re all over the country.”

This month two of Beck’s designs have nudged into the aisles of one of the country’s most pervasive arts and crafts retailers, where “Home Sweet Home” patterns find comfort among packets for gardens, birdhouses, well-wishes for weddings and dozens of other traditional designs.

The 2,000 packets Beck sold to Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby are anything but traditional:

• “Frog Music” depicts four brightly- hued frogs clinging to piano keys.
• “Bugs and Bach” captures animated insects as they creep through stanzas of one of Bach’s many classic works, “Inventio 15.”


Lawrence resident Carol Beck has been making her own patterns for needlepoint and cross-stitch for years. Her Frog Music pattern, at left, and Bugs and Bach pattern, below, are available at Hobby Lobby.

“They’re really cute,” said Fran Hastings, manager of the needlework department at Hobby Lobby in Lawrence, 1801 W. 23rd St.

“I’m proud of her. It’s not an easy accomplishment.”

License to grow

While the patterns may defy explanation in a creative sense — “I don’t know where they came from,” Beck said — the business effects of their placement in 342 stores spread across 27 states are easily quantified.

Bugs and Bach

Hobby Lobby, with projected sales of $1.42 billion this year, is a big player in the arts and crafts industry. And the company’s $5,600 order, through a distributor, easily represents the largest sale made by Lattuca Designs since Beck founded the business seven years ago.

Now she’s looking for more.

“I’m hoping to get into the big chains, and then license the designs for mugs or T-shirts or mouse pads or whatever,” said Beck, who already sells patterns through 100 smaller, independent shops, including Crafty & Co. in downtown Lawrence. “That’s where the real money is.”

Beck flips through patterns for her “Purple Retro” design, and sees even more potential ahead. The pattern — essentially pieces of black-and-white graph paper filled with symbols to represent colors — calls for bright orange flowers and dark vases, all against a backdrop of purple squares.

Blue and Gold.

“I can see this on the back of a deck of cards, or anything else,” she said. “Thomas Kinkade has his stuff all over everything, because his stuff looks different than everybody else’s. His stuff is different. He’s the ‘Painter of Light.’ “

Beck doesn’t carry a similar moniker, nor would she know where to start.

“I just want to be known for doing really different stuff,” she said.

‘An ever-expanding market’

She won’t get any argument from Neva Wilson, an avid cross-stitcher who glanced at Beck’s designs last week while browsing the needlework department at Hobby Lobby.

Wilson has been sewing for 58 of her 69 years, and prefers to work on angels, clowns and eagles than venture into unknown territory. But she’s confident that Beck’s designs will sell, and is pleased that a Lawrence woman is making a name for herself in the industry.

“It looks like something that would be entertaining for the youth, no doubt,” Wilson said. “They look neat. I think people will probably pick them up and look at them and study them. If she’s got a spot, people will buy them — whether they finish them or not.”

Beck, who earned a bachelor’s degree in art history in 1997 from Kansas University, understands that each work’s beauty rests in the eye of its beholder. That’s why she’s continuing to create new designs, working to boost her inventory of 33 patterns available through www.lattucadesigns.com, a Web site created by her husband and business partner, Thad Beck.

Computer programs may have made it easier to translate hand-drawn designs into distinctive symbols representing each colorful stitch of six-strand embroidery floss, but the real work — and potential business value — remains in the artistic process.

“As long as she continues to keep her stretch of off-the-wall creativity going, she should have an ever-expanding market,” Thad Beck said.