In 2021, Victoria (Vicki) Butler was hard at work at university, focused on her degree in English Literature. But in her spare time, the self-confessed hobby addict was hunched over in her parents’ living room, crafting hand-embroidered designs onto clothing that were selling faster than she could keep up with.

Fast forward four years, and the 26-year-old from Suffolk now has a business premises for Tori’s Embroidery — with another on the way — two staff members, and thousands of orders to fulfil, including from celebrities who can’t get enough of her quirky, tongue-in-cheek designs on hats, shirts, tote bags, and more.

The bubbly entrepreneur said she had tried a few other creative endeavours before the embroidery business took over.

She told Express.co.uk: “I first started on Depop and I would go to car boot sales and get loads of clothes, chop them up, sew them together and try to make these two piece sets, and I’d sell those in Depop for a while, but I got bored of that. I had a real thing of getting bored of every hobby that I started. I’d make some money from it and then I’d move on to something else. I did the same with scrunchies and then I did earrings.

“I basically did everything until I found embroidery, and I started posting them on social media and people really loved it. They were placing orders through my Instagram, but it wasn’t sustainable for me because the jumpers were taking me around two hours to make, and it was hurting my hands. I then got an embroidery machine, and I started doing a little bit at uni and a little bit at home, but I was basically not doing my uni work because I was focusing too much on my embroidery.”

One particular design that Vicki had made ended up going viral on TikTok, and she saw there was potential for a real business. She took some time out in order to finish her degree, but once she was out of university, passion took over again.

She went viral again with another video garnering more than four million views on TikTok and orders started coming out of her ears quickly.

“I was doing it from my parents’ conservatory at home. I bought another embroidery machine and then I decided I was just quickly growing out of my parents’ living room. I was just taking up their whole house, basically. It was a bit ridiculous.”

She found a business premises but the brand was so popular she swiftly outgrew that too. However in Christmas 2023, tragedy struck Vicki and her family when her mother died.

She said: “That put a whole spanner in the works for this, so I was like I didn’t know if I would carry on doing it.”

However, she didn’t want to waste her opportunity and decided to take her late mother’s advice she had shared before she passed away.

She said: “I got a business premise that my mum told me to do before she died, and I decided to go ahead with it. It was like three times bigger and I was like, ‘OK, I may as well try’.”

Now, her designs have been seen on UK celebrities like Amanda Holden, Alan Carr and GK Barry. And further afield, her shirts have been reposted by Lana Del Rey.

Vicki said: “I’m a big fan of Lana Del Rey. I love her so much. I used to be obsessed with her when I was younger. So to see that is just amazing, like my little t-shirt is on Lana’s Instagram!”

From here, Vicki says she has plans to scale the business even further, and bring it closer to her customers.

“My next thing is to scale the brand, and I just want to become a trendy embroidery business. I want to scale it to be not just an embroidery business where you just get custom stuff from like, just the generic workwear logo stuff. I want it to be a cool brand, but with custom stuff, things like hen parties, cool embroidery designs, just fun, relatable things, and I wanna scale it so it’s just bigger and better every year,” she said.

She’d also love to have a store with embroidery machines so people can come in and create their own clothing.

She added: “I think that would be quite fun… it’s such a cosy hobby, isn’t it? I think it’s like breaking the grandma stigma. It’s not just for grandmas.”

If you want to buy some of Vicki’s designs, you can shop her designs here and follow what she’s up to here.