I Am GenQ: Meet Betz White

So what’s a fashion designer turned stay-at-home-mom of two small boys to do for fun? If you’re Betz White, you write a couple of craft books, then take a turn at pattern design and finally jump into the world of textile design. Oh, and if you’re Betz White, you do it all in the most environmentally friendly way possible—through recycling and with organic practices.

Melissa and Jake met Betz in October at Quilt Market where she graced a mini-booth in the Robert Kaufman Fabrics area of the ginormous convention center floor.  Her fabric designs are hip and young—just the stuff we crave here at GenQ. And they are completely organic, proudly labeled with the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS). GOTS was developed and launched in 2006 by four textile-industry organizations representing the U.S., the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany. In order to earn a GOTS label for your fabrics, organic practices for growing, harvesting, milling and producing fabrics must be in place and verified and that’s what Robert Kaufman did.

Betz, 46, reflects a changing aspect of our little old q-world that we’ve seen increasing in the last few years. She’s not a quilter. She really doesn’t make quilts. Instead, she’s a trained designer with an apparel background and that’s led her to making (and remaking) clothing, bags, accessories and more. (We can name at least a dozen hot designers who share a similar unfamiliarity with quilting and that’s such a change from 10 years ago when a quilt fabric designer was almost always a quilter!)

“I was entering into the DIY crafty community and there were all these beautiful fabrics at the quilt shops. That’s where I began. But the quilting, I’ve always felt like I don’t know how to do that. I wasn’t intimidated, but it just wasn’t what I did. Now I’m in this world of sewers that sew and make quilts. This blending of the two, it’s definitely drawing me in and making me see that that’s something I can do.”

But now that Betz has stepped into the q-world, she’s becoming more entranced with the possibilities.

“I have made a few quilts. I have this whole background in apparel. You learn the proper way to do an undercollar and edge stitching. Then for me to look at a quilt, and think I don’t know how to do that seems so silly to me. It’s really opened my eyes to see all of this amazing piecing. It has been really fun for me. One thought is I feel like I invented this thing (she laughs) and the other is because I’m not trained or experienced in quilting, maybe I would have a fresh perspective.”

Even more fun, though, is that her sons have inherited the creative genes from mom. Connor just turned 12 yesterday (Happy birthday, Connor!) and Sean is 10.

“Both of them love to come in my studio and both of them love to draw. The younger one is really into making stuff out of fabric. He was three and he was in the shopping cart when I was looking for sweaters to felt. He said, ‘Mommy, is this cashmere?’ This lady there gave me a scary look. He knows his stuff.”

Sean made a Thanksgiving gift for his teacher at school, which Betz posted on her blog.

Working around the boys has become a skill set all of its own, Betz said.

“The work time has been squashed. It’s tricky. I try to do some things in the evening. Now they’re old enough that they are self-sufficient. And I try to lower my work expectations. I’ll make deals: if you let Mommy have two hours of work, then we’ll go to the pool.”

Betz got started with her craftiness in 2005 when she quit the corporate hamster wheel to stay home with her sons. “That was right around the time the bloggers and DIY got big,” she said.

Betz would scour her local thrift shop for wool sweaters that she could turn into felted goodies.

“My eyes were opened to the amazing abundance, ridiculous abundance, of stuff in the world. And that’s just my thrift store in my town. There’s so much more that can be done with this stuff that’s going to end up in a landfill. Not everyone wants to reuse stuff.”

That’s where her first book, Warm Fuzzies: 30 Sweet Felted Projects, came from, recycling old sweaters and making fun things from them.

Then it was Sewing Green: 25 Projects Made with Repurposed & Organic Materials, which also shows how upcycling can render some pretty wonderful projects.

Fabric designing had called to her for a long time. She approached some manufacturers early on with the idea of producing a completely organic line of fabric, but it was still too early for these companies to embrace the cost and complications of doing organic. So Betz designed her own line and sold it retail through her Etsy shop.

“I got my feet wet. I did a couple of collections and I feel they were well-received but I could not wholesale them,” she said.

A couple of years later she’s releasing a line of patterns, came across Robert Kaufman’s booth at Market, asked the question again and this time, they bit. Her first line, Stitch, is a collection of 22 bright and beautifully organic prints with the delightful theme of…stitching!

And guess what? Our friends at Robert Kaufman have given us a tall tower of 22 fats of Betz’s entire line for us to dangle in front of your eyes. This is gonna be a fun one, so listen up: When we asked Betz what her secret indulgence, she told us it is candy, something that disappears quickly if measures aren’t taken.

“I pretty much always have candy somewhere in the house that’s mine. Usually it’s chocolate but not necessarily and I have to hide it because it’s mine.”

So here’s what you have to do to qualify for this giveaway: Offer Betz, ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE, your best hiding place for her candy. We’ll pick one answer at random on Friday morning at 9 a.m. PST and that person will be the recipient of some really cool fabrics. And while you’re on our Facebook page, if you haven’t liked us there already, please do.

Here is Betz’s blog. And here is her website.