Debbie and Elizabeth are the sisters behind Sweet Paprika Designs, a hand-dyed yarn and pattern studio they've run together out of Montreal since 2007. What started as kitchen-stove dye experiments in an Ottawa apartment has grown into a business built on traceable, Canadian-sourced wool, from farm to fibre to finished skein. Their yarn bases carry musical names like Crescendo, Cadenza, and Andante, and their monthly crafting circles are a fixture of their community.
Q. Sweet Paprika started in 2007 with your kitchen stove dye experiments, and now, nearly two decades later, your focus is evolving toward traceable, Canadian-sourced yarns like Sutton and Winfield, where you can follow the fiber from a specific farm to your Montreal dye studio. What sparked that shift toward local sourcing, and how has working directly with Canadian farms and small mills changed the way you think about the dyeing process itself?
From the very beginning when we started the business we looked at our sourcing options for undyed yarns and wondered why no one in the indie-dyer scene at the time was working with locally sourced wool. Honestly it was very hard to find any source of Canadian wool in 2007. At the time we lived not far from the Canadian Wool-Growers Co-op in Carleton Place (Ontario) and when we visited their store we were disappointed to find that even they were only offering imported yarns. We started seriously looking for Canadian options around 2012, and ended up working with Wellington Fibres, a small mill in Ontario. They’re great to work with but they’re very busy so we can only do limited runs with them. Over the past several years we’ve partnered with many other Canadian farmers and mills, which can be quite challenging but also very rewarding.
Six mini skeins of Winfield, a 2-ply worsted weight yarn spun from 100% Canadian wool.
One of the main challenges with working with small farms is that the lead times for milling can be long, so we need to plan much farther in advance than if we’re working with a big distributor/importer. Right now the farmer that we work with to source our Winfield and Sutton has been out of stock for several months and we’re anxiously waiting for the new batch to get back from the mill!
The main change to our actual dye process when working with local wools is that it’s all non-superwash wool. Superwash yarns tend to absorb the dye colours very quickly and easily, while non-superwash yarns require a bit more patience! But we love creating rich, tonal palettes on all our yarns.
Q. Your yarn bases all carry musical names: Crescendo, Pizzicato, Messa di Voce, Cadenza, Andante. If you were to generate a playlist to encapsulate the experience of running Sweet Paprika, what are a few songs that might be on it, and what would that playlist be called?
Our musical names are inspired by our childhood growing up with a mother who was a piano teacher! Both Elizabeth and I learned to play piano from a young age, and I also played violin for many years. When we were teenagers we used to play piano duets sometimes; our favourite was a duet arrangement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony.
If we’re talking in terms of classical music, I would say that on a good day when all the puzzle pieces are falling into place as planned, running the business can be like an elaborate Bach fugue – lots going on, but everything working together to contribute to the whole. On hectic days it can be more like the Flight of the Bumblebee though!
Grazioso is a lace-weight silk and linen blend
Q. When you're building something together, whether that's a new colorway, a kit, or a pattern collection, how do you divide the creative work? Are there moments where your instincts pull in opposite directions, and if so, how does that shape the final result?
Since we’re sisters, Elizabeth and I have lots of experience working together on creative projects! Usually one of us will start with an initial idea that we’ll bring to the table, and then we’ll discuss it and work out the planning stages together. Often one or the other of us will take the lead on the execution of a project, but we’ll check in and get feedback from each other along the way. Elizabeth is more of a perfectionist than I am, so sometimes she pushes me to polish things a little more, and sometimes I push her to not worry quite so much about small details. I think the result is that we tend to take the time we need to be confident about what we’re putting out in the world, while still acknowledging that we’re human and that’s part of what makes a small business like ours special.
Q. Sweet Paprika has hosted monthly teas and crafting circles, both in-person and online, since 2007. How has the community that shows up to those teas shaped Sweet Paprika in ways you might not have expected?
Our crafting circle has gone through a few different iterations over the years, starting with inviting people into our own living rooms, then moving to local cafés when we needed more space, moving online during the pandemic, and just recently being able to host them in person again in our new studio space.
Having a supportive group has always helped us by building confidence in what we’re offering, and providing a valuable opportunity to get feedback from fellow crafters when we need an outside perspective on something. I think the fact that we were able to maintain a core group of regulars even when we had to move to Zoom helped us to see ways we could connect with our community online as well as in person, which has impacted the way we’ve set up our yarn clubs so that all our members can feel connected no matter where they live.
You can find Sweet Paprika Designs' full yarn and pattern collections at sweetpaprikadesigns.com, and follow along with Debbie and Elizabeth's studio life, dye days, and crafting circles on Instagram.
With thanks to Debbie and Elizabeth for sharing their story with us,
