For 30 years, Heather Knight has been wowing customers with tartan clothing, gifts and more

The Jøtul woodstove is cranking out heat on a cold December day as Heather Knight finishes up the last of her holiday orders. There’s a BBC podcast playing while Heather does embroidery on a pair of custom mittens: purple wool, emblazoned with a raven and trimmed with gorgeous Isle of Skye tartan. Her husband Lee Wilbur has just taken a pile of packages to the post office in New Germany, NS, down the road a few miles from their home which doubles as the nerve centre for Heather Knight Clothing and Gifts in Springfield, rural Annapolis County. Here, she and Lee create bespoke clothing for children, women, and men, much of it sporting one of more than 500 Scottish and Canadian tartans.

Heather says she fell into sewing for a living purely by accident. When she returned to work after her oldest son was born, she realized that she didn’t like working for others. She quit her job, with the plan that if she could make a mere $50 a week from sewing, it would be all she would need. Lee was working as an industrial mechanic, helping to build naval frigates and oil platforms, and Heather sold primarily handmade children’s clothing and bedding—because her son was small and so children’s needs were always on her mind.

“At the time we were doing markets, craft shows, becoming known by word of mouth,” she says. “We were lucky enough to get in on the cruise ship pavilion at Pier 22, where we fine-tuned our product line, which ended up turning into a wholesale business. It just evolved.”

A button shawl and infinity scarf in Culloden tartan.

The tartan lines for which her company is so well-known came into being while she was selling at the pavilion over
a decade. Heather says, “we switched to wholesale, plus did a few shows with our fashion line—which hadn’t been planned, but people started asking for product I had made for myself.” At one point in the business studio, then located in Mt. Uniacke, Heather had five employees working with her, which was a bit overwhelming. “We attempted to downsize, not very successfully, and then my daughter in law, who worked with us, became pregnant with her second child and was going on maternity leave. We closed the studio and moved it to our house in Springfield where it would be just Lee and I doing all the work.”

Heather Knight Clothing & Gifts has three different lines: the children and babies’ clothing, accessories, and bedding; a home décor line including placemats, oven mitts, tablecloths; and the women’s fashion line which features tops, skirts, accessories, capes, shawls and more, in both tartan and fashion fabrics. She also has a modest line of men’s apparel, ties, scarves, jackets, pyjamas, and such. In total there are more than 100 different items in the product line, with almost endless variations in patterns, tartans, and embellishments. 

The move to Springfield was the right choice for Heather, and Lee took a bigger role in the operation. She says, “when I had employees, I would say that Lee did everything else so I could run the business. He services my machines, he could do cutting, ironing, sewing, deliveries, shopping for the business…and now he’s taken an even larger role in production. Plus, he models, too!”

Things ran smoothly in Springfield for more than a year…and then COVID-19 hit. At that point, Heather had been operating for years in a business depending largely on tourism dollars, and had weathered bumps before. She says, “My initial thought was that our season would be delayed for a few months, then go forward. And then it didn’t. We were fortunate that some of our businesses took their wholesale orders in the spring because they too, thought this was only going to go on for a few months.”

Then, the demand for face masks took off in “a crazy way.” The Breton Ability Centre, an adult residential centre for people with special needs, wanted masks for themselves, and there was no real supply at that time. Heather has had a long and positive relationship with the Centre and their Best of Cape Breton gift shop enterprise and says that the masks she made for them were readily accepted, comfortable and durable. “They asked if we would make them for the shop, which we did…the rest is history, because everyone wanted them.”

She makes a dizzying number of masks in tartans, in fun printed and seasonal fabrics, some with bespoke embroidery on them—literally thousands of them. At this point there seems to be no end in sight for mask orders, either.

What is the allure of tartan for so many? Heather says, “I’m not of Scottish descent, but I am a Nova Scotian, so tartan and Scottish culture has been always part of the zeitgeist. Until I started interacting with people from a Scottish background, I didn’t understand just how strongly it made people feel, connecting them to their history. It’s a real honour creating a bespoke item for someone featuring their colours, tartan preferences, interests.”

Among the most popular of her designs is the Arran hooded cape, also the most expensive item in the lineup. Everything about it is customizable, from the woolen material to the embroidery; accents with tartan or not; porcelain buttons from Megan Billings Pottery in New Brunswick.

Perhaps surprisingly, the most popular piece of clothing the company makes is the Wee Tartan Dress. Heather says, “it looks traditional, but it’s not—it has a fringed apron and a kilt pin, a little pewter button custom made for us by Atlantic Pewter, but it’s machine wash and dry with a gathered skirt instead of pleats. We’ve been selling it so long, people who wore them are now buying them for their children!”

In a small business you must be able to do many things. Heather Knight’s original website was mostly a spot for wholesale clients to see pictures of her products, but in the past several years it has exploded in popularity for mail order, through Shopify. “I do all the maintenance and upkeep on the site so if anything goes sideways, it’s my doing!”

Heather says that often, new products will appear in her lineup after she’s been asked to make a bespoke item. “I say our customers have better ideas than we do! Last year we had a couple of requests for items in lambswool or merino, which we didn’t offer. I brought in some wraps and blankets and shawls from another company, they were well received, and I thought…why don’t we make our own? I sourced lambswool and merino fabric, and for 2022 we will be offering a few items exclusively on our retail site.”

“If it’s fabric and can be shoved through a sewing machine, we have probably made it.”