An Interview with Birgitte of Sew Danish

Another in my very intermittent interview series…

Birgitte is the owner of Sew Danish, an Etsy shop focussing on textile art. And she has some beautiful stuff.

Tell me a little bit about yourself — your life story, one might say.

Where to begin? Life is great and very exciting. I’m Danish, but currently living in England in a beautiful old town with my American husband and our very old ginger cat. I’m a registered nurse and has been working in the operating theaters doing open heart surgery for many years. In the mid 1990 life changed a bit and I decided to apply for a job in Saudi Arabia at a hospital. My goal was with in a couple of years to make a saving so that I upon my return to Denmark, could start working part time as a nurse and at the same time pursue my lifelong passion of crafting by finally doing a formal craft training.

In Saudi (of all places) I met my wonderful husband. After about three years we moved to England. Shortly after our arrival to England I embarked on 5 years of contemporary craft training. I did City and Guilds part 1 and 2 (now diploma) in patchwork and quilting, as well as courses in contemporary hand and machine embroidery. The courses and its tons of assessments were all based on developing your own designs from your chosen design sources, through design work, sampling, to the finished product. Very very exciting and a fantastic eyeopener for me. I have been crafting since very early childhood. My mum taught me to knit when I was 6 years old. I loved it and has been crafting ever since. Being given the knowledge and tools to develop your own designs and then taking the designs in to hand-on techniques was pure play time. Very very busy years, but loved every minute of it.

After 7 years in England we moved to Virginia to the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains close to my husbands family. In Virginia I did a couple of farmers markets as well as local craft fairs which was a great way of being involved in the local community. It definitely helped me settling in and feeling grounded. But since life is wonderful unpredictable, we are after 2 years in the US now back in England, living in the same superb town. Shortly after our return I was invited to join two great contemporary exhibiting textile groups, which keeps me very busy. Lately I have taught quite a few workshops as well.

You do so many different things in your shop — dyeing, felting, sewing, weaving. They’re all textile-based, though. When did you start playing with textiles? What fascinates you about them?

I love working with with texture. I find it very intriguing building surfaces up from scratch using lots of layers. I love experimenting with anything that can be dyed or in one way or the other having colour added to it. Most of my work are textile based, but I often combine fabric and paper, layering, sewing, distressing, a bit of paint, beads and wire to finish. I have been a traditional quilter since the early 1980 ies. Now and then I still make a traditional quilt and I absolutely love the very tactile sensation when handling a quilt, but I must admit I that the freedom in playing and working with your own designs appeals to me greatly. The mixture of listings in my shop reflects that. I cannot help playing, following yet another idea of mine that has to be put into practice. Lately I have been exploring the possibilities of working with velvet. When designing I always tend to end up being very true to may Scandinavian roots and for the most part end up with quite simple, clean designs and very often in light to medium colour.

Given all of the different textiles you work with, do you play with reused or recycled items at all? Old clothing, napkins, curtains, anything like that?

Part 2 of my training was focusing on experimenting. You would for example take a traditional technique like lets say folded patchwork. Then you were expected to play and makes samples in as many ways as possible to explore the possibilities of that technique. Like working it in lots of different types of fabric, plastic, paper, work with scale, texture, overlapping, embellishing with stitch, beads, wire…..what ever.

During all this playing with techniques I early on started using things that I had accumulated over the years. I love going to flea markets (car boot sales in the UK), antique fairs, thrift shops etc. and over the years I have picked up stuff that I thought I couldn’t live with out, but didn’t really know what to do with. A lot of these items went in to my work and still does. I find it very satisfying recycling, reusing and re-purposing things. I love the soft, worn, washed look that old fabric has, as well as old cotton sheeting and tablecloths dyes beautiful. Most of the beads that I use for embellishment are from discarded/broken necklaces. When being given a bucket of flowers I’m love the flowers, but are usually (even more) excited about the cellophane wrap which can be coloured, melted, stitched…. the insides of some envelopes has beautiful delicate patterns that works wonders in design work when looking for adding a subtle pattern. By using recycled items in my work, I find that my finished pieces avoid having a store bought look as well as it usually has the benefit of keeping the cost down, especially when making larger exhibition pieces.

How did you decide to start selling your work, and how is that going for you?

In February one of the textile groups that I belong to, had a very well received exhibition and I personally did really well from our sale table. That combined with having sold well in the US, as well as gotten a fantastic response and feedback on my things from my customers, encouraged me to take the plunge end May and open my shop http:www.SewDanish.etsy.com . Being totally in the stone age regarding anything computer related, it has been a very steep computer learning curve. But great fun. I had expected to have had a bit more trade by now, but I’m positive that eventually more people will find me and sales will pick up. I’m spending quite a bit of time trying to find my way in and out Etsy, WLE and Indie. A lot of fun and I have met fantastic people, but it is surprisingly how much time it takes.

What sort of marketing advice might you give to someone who’s just starting out?

I’m still relatively new seller on Etsy. I opened up my www.SewDanish.etsy.com shop about 2 1/2 month ago and I must admit that I hadn’t really given it a whole lot of thoughts how I would promote my shop. I’m not that good on the computer, as I rather want to spend my time crafting, so I must admit that I learned a lot setting up shop. But it wasn’t until I had listed some items, that I actually started spending time in the Forum and realized that a lot a work was to be done to try to direct people to have a look (and hopefully buy) at your shop.

I have found the Forum an absolutely fantastic place to get info. I now try to be active in the Forum when ever possible. I have a page on WE LOVE ETSY where I do a bit of blogging and meet a lot of great people. I’ve signed up on Indie public, but haven’t been as active there as I would have liked to. Life has interfered. My email signature with a link to SewDanish follows every email that I send out, making it easy for people to click and have a look. I have had business cards made with photos of my work and are always carring some with me to hand out to people or pin where ever possible.

If any of you should happen to visit Denmark, then do bring a lot of cards. In most supermarkets, usually right by the entrance door, there are notice boards where people can put there cards and fliers. I kicked my self when I went there last month, as I had forgotten that that was the case, and ran out of cards. Whether it gives you any customers I don’t know, but it is worth the try. As a whole I don’t find it all that easy to promote my self. It is not really my nature to be pushy and seeking to draw attention to my self, so that as well as been an interesting aspect of setting up shop on Etsy. Having said that, since I am proud of what I’m making, I think it makes it a easier to over come and accept as something I have to do if I want to succeed on Etsy and any other site I might join in the future.

It sounds like you’ve had a lot more formal training in your craft than most of us indie folks — how do you think it’s affected how you work? And would you recommend formal training to the rest of us?

When doing my City and Guilds part 1 and 2 in Patchwork and Quilting as well as the contemporary machine embroidery course, there was a huge focus on developing your own designs from scratch. Part 1 we were taught art and design work, worked through a whole range of various hand and machine quilting techniques, as well as various dying and surface decorating techniques on how to colour your own fabrics.

Every other week we had a sewing technique alternating with art and design work. Prior to this course I hadn’t done any art/design work and to be quite honest it took me a few times before I got my head around to what I was supposed to do. And then I had FUN. We were by the art teacher introduced to a string of various design techniques always working from our personal chosen design source. The design source could be a piece of bark, a seed pod, a photo of stacked tiles…. what ever that appealed to you and matched the design briefs. Very very exciting and a huge eyeopener. On the sewing days our quilt teacher trained us in taking our developed designs and translating them into stitch. It was very exciting, challenging and such a different way for me to work. I felt that I took a huge leap forward in my crafting, and discovered an unknown side of my creativity.

I now recommend to anyone, if given the opportunity, to do a design course. It gives one a huge freedom and satisfaction to be able to take any given object or photo, go through the design process, choose the design and decide what is needed to translate it into a finished piece with focus on colour, texture and technique, so that the finished stitched piece is as true to your chosen design as possible.

As you can see, Birgitte’s work is really beautiful — when I’ve scraped up a little money I plan to buy a few things from her myself. In the meantime, I hope y’all are willing to go and have a look — there’s plenty there I haven’t shown you!