Megan Navarro
DRIPPING SPRINGS — Brooke Durkee has traded in her dental hygienist toolbelt to that of an embroidery business owner.
Launched in late 2025, Bel & Co. Embroidery blossomed, following the birth of Durkee’s third child. With her growing family, she wanted to step away from the dental field that she had been in for eight years and pour her heart into something that allowed her to be more present for her kids.
Embroidery was a natural idea for her home-based business, Durkee explained. Along with her kids — ages 18 months, 3 years and 6 years old — always having embroidered products, it’s also been a passion of hers for years.
“I wanted to find something where I actually enjoyed working, enjoyed doing and this was what I landed on. I've always been pretty creative in design, as well, because a lot of the embroidery is also digital design and setting up everything,” she said, adding that the name of the business comes from her children: Beau, Eleanor and Lucy.
What she loves most is being able to take what a client is envisioning, whether that be a name or an image, and transforming it into a finished product.
Initially, she foresaw the business would be a small side gig that would take up approximately an hour a day, but with the Dripping Springs having a need for local embroidery, Bel & Co. has kept her busy from the get-go.
“When I started the business, it was right into the holiday season and so, gift-giving and holiday things hit super heavy. I kind of was expecting a downward slope after the holidays and it just never happened,” she said. “It’s just evolved in the amount of what I could handle at a time.”
Durkee runs the business completely from her home, where people will contact her through the social media pages or website. She explained that most times, clients will reach out with items that they already own that they want to add embroidery to, but she also has a small collection on hand that she can provide.
Another component of the business is live embroidery, Durkee said, where she will show up with her machine to private events and do embroidery on-site tailored to the client.
Currently, because it’s based on the season, her most popular product has been towels — whether that is beach towels for the summer or bath towels for students getting ready to go to college. Durkee added that backpacks and custom birthday T-shirts are also popular year-round.
While she loves all the products that she gets to create, Durkee shared that her recent favorite is one from a couple of months ago for someone whose best friend lost their mother and they wanted a completely custom order on blank fabric with a Spanish design in mind.
“She ended up framing it and giving it to her friend, so it was a very special memento to her friend's mother,” Durkee said. “I think that was probably one of my favorite things just because I knew how cherished it would be and it was just completely out of nothing that we put all these images together to create it for her.”
Knowing that people have had to drive to Austin to get their items embroidered, Durkee explained that she wants to continue spreading the word of Bel & Co. Another goal that she has is to venture more into the live embroidery space for private events, baby showers, weddings, etc.
Bel & Co Embroidery is based in Dripping Springs, but welcomes orders from all over the United States. Learn more about the business at www.belcoembroidery.com.
