Photo by Casey Gammon
Sue Henry
For Sue Henry, founder of handmade textiles and embroidered goods company Tulusa, the beauty is in the details — whether she’s making custom pieces or fulfilling orders for Chantecaille.
A lifelong artist, Henry worked as a sculptor in California and Colorado before settling in Del Ray in 2001. She spent some time making housewares, and also carving clay and linoleum blocks. Henry had plans to open a ceramics studio, but life got in the way.
“We had two little boys, and they’re rough and tumble,” Henry said. “They break everything, it gets very dusty. I’m certainly not the tidiest person in the world, either, so I closed that business and didn’t open a ceramics studio. I never thought that I would have a business in the arts again.”
Henry took six years off. Then, in 2015, she felt the urge to create again. She returned to the linoleum blocks she had been carving prior to her break, and used them to make prints. Combining her prints with embroidery, Henry began transforming blank pieces of fabric into colorful, textured designs.
“I didn't have a job at that point, I didn't have a business, but I felt like I needed something,” Henry said. “As artists and also as human beings, we question our moves and our motives. Like, maybe we’re doing something that’s not going to pan out. So I turned my brain off and just embroidered.”
When Henry found herself with 30 pieces of intricately embroidered fabric, she decided it was time to do something with them. Despite not being the most experienced seamstress, Henry fashioned her creations into clutches and throw pillows.
In December of 2015, Henry hosted a pop-up shop and invited her neighbors.
Photo by Caroline White
“Del Ray is a really special place. It’s an amazing place to live. It’s an amazing community,” Henry said. “And people showed up. I pretty much sold out, over two or three days.”
From there, Henry started to grow her business. Using the name Tulusa, she launched a website to sell her products in February 2016. Once again, she sold out.
“I was like, ‘Ok, this could be good’,” Henry said.
Tulusa’s initial customer base was friends, family and people in the local area. Then, at a steady pace, things started to take off. Henry continued to hold pop-up shops and sell her products at festivals like Art on the Avenue. She also expanded the selection of products available on her website, now selling a variety of accessories, pillows and table linens. (Go to tulusa.com.)
Recently, Henry has ventured into the wholesale market. She also completes custom orders for businesses and boutiques. Henry is currently in the process of filling an order of 500 makeup bags for upscale skincare company Chantecaille. The bags will be sold at the Chantecaille counter in Bergdorf Goodman.
You can see some of her work at @tulusa.goods on Instagram.
Business demands have grown, but Henry has stuck to the handmade approach that made her products so unique in the first place. This means carving the prints themselves, before printing, embroidering, cutting and sewing yards and yards of linen.
“I’m doing everything from stem to stern, besides weaving the linen,” Henry said. “But there’s a lot of passion and production behind the art. And I’ve found, especially with this major increase of work in the past six months, that the more I work the more inspiration I get.”
While Henry loves her work, it’s still arduous. Recently, she hired some help, including a stitcher, which has allowed her to focus more on designing. Her two boys are also old enough to help during the summer, painting linen and doing odd jobs.
“The path to success is not a straight line, I’ll tell you that,” Henry said. “But it’s been great. I really love what I do. I feel really lucky to have a business in the arts, and my family’s pretty supportive of it.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story online misidentified Sue Henry in a photo.
