Meet Betsy Mitten | Surface Pattern Designer, Teacher and Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Betsy Mitten and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Betsy, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I’ve worked for many decades, for myself and for profit and non profits. Depending on what stage of life I’ve been in and other responsibilities I’ve needed to juggle, both have been important. You learn a lot working for others, and also for yourself.

When I became a mom I realized I needed the flexibility that running my own business would offer. I’ve been able to draw on my work experience and education to put together a business that focuses on what I enjoy most – teaching and pattern design.

I’ve always had that entrepreneurial spirit, though. When I look back I can remember drawing and selling paper dolls at recess in elementary school to friends. As a 5th grader, I didn’t need the extra money, but it was fun. In college I did make a good chunk of my spending money by painting custom characters and selling to friends and acquaintances. And later when I went on to art school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago I started a business selling my hand-dyed arashi silk fabric to fashion and interior designers in Chicago.

After Art School I worked in museums and eventually private schools, and then back to museums again!

I have a long history of teaching art and sciences classes at Museums, and private and public schools as staff and the last 6 years as an independent teacher running my own business. I loved it, but I missed creating my own art. I’ve also discovered that when I’m focussing only on creating art I miss the teaching!

In 2020 I enrolled in Bonnie Christine’s Immersion course to learn digital surface pattern design and Stacie Bloomfields Leverage course on creative entrepreneurship. A lightbulb went off and I realized I could combine my love of teaching and Surface Pattern Design into one business. It has been a long process of discovery, and looking back I can see that everything I’ve done has led me to where I am now.


Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m a surface pattern designer, artist, and teacher. Surface Pattern Designers create the art and patterns on clothing, wallpaper, dishes, fabric, stationery – the opportunities are endless!

My art is inspired by nature and influenced by my understanding of the science behind the beauty and how everything works together. I love to look at the wolrd in ecosystems and include all of that visual information in my patterns.

In addition to patterns, I also love teaching and I’m especially interested in the intersection of art and science. I’m fortunate I’ve been able to combine my love of pattern design and teaching into a creative career.

My current career is the culmination of decades of pursuing opportunities that interested me and felt like the next step. There has always been a thread of art, teaching, and nature or science in my work.

I studied Fibers and Textiles at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the mid 1980’s. While in school I started my own hand dyed fabric studio creating yardage for Chicago fashion and interior designers. I ran this for several years after graduation, and while artistically successful, I realized it wasn’t a sustainable business model. At the same time I was taking scientific illustration at the Art Institute and I noticed that the more science we knew about what we were drawing the more we saw. That was the first time I really began to see the connection between art and science.

It was hard to set aside my dream of a textile studio, but as it turned out it was delayed dream, not denied.

I had enjoyed mentoring my Co-op student in my studio and that gave me the idea of teaching. I pitched several ideas for classes that combined art, science, and natural history to the Field Museum of Chicago. Teaching those classes was pivotal in my decision to pursue an education degree and an MEd. Over the next few decades I developed and taught programs and classes that combined art and science to 1000’s of adults, children, and families at the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Morton Arboretum, the Field Museum, and private and public schools.

While I loved teaching, my long ago dream of surface pattern design was still there. I had really struggled to learn digital design, but in January 2020, I saw a post for Bonnie Christine’s Immersion Surface Pattern Design Class. I signed up and quickly realized that my business could evolve to focus on both pattern design and teaching.

Since then, I’ve sold my nature themed patterns on products in my Society6 Shop, fabric in my Spoonflower Shop, and taught live online classes that connect patterns, art, and nature. I’m in the process of recording online courses that will be available on my website and I’ll be pitching my portfolio to licensing companies this summer. My newsletter offers free tutorials, behind the scenes, my best tips, and interviews with surface pattern designers, especially those that have had a varied career.

One of the things that sets my artwork apart is the knowledge I have of the natural world and my color sense. I often work in ecosystems and include the plants, animals, fungi, living and nonliving such and peebles and water in my designs. My goal is to have my patterns transport or remind people to their favorite outdoor places. My decades of teaching art and science and my years of mixing my own dye formulas play an important role in my color palettes, my patterns and my classes. I’m especially passionate about making information accessible. I believe everyone is creative in their own way and I enjoy working with people of all levels of experience.

I often compare my career to the switchbacks in hiking or tacking in sailing. I’ve taken each interest as far as it goes and then somehow it always leads to the next step. It has certainly not been a straight line, but as I look back I can see exactly why each step was important to getting me to where I am now.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There have been so many people who have been instrumental in my being where I am now! I have to give my husband, Roger, a tremendous amount of credit because he was the person who encouraged me to go back to art school and get the degree I had always wanted. We were newly married, he was finishing up his degree at Northwestern and he said, now is the time – I know you can do it!

While you don’t need an art degree to pursue a creative career, it was pivotal for me.

Other mentors have been my Scientific Illustration Professor Donald Saynor (a legend in his field in the 1970’s), Author/Illustrator Laura Montenegro who I studied under for a few years and more recently Bonnie Christine and her Immersion Course and Stacie Bloomfield of Gingiber. I want to add in all of the people I’ve worked for, who when I said… “I have this idea” were willing to let me experiment and try something new. I can’t leave out the parents who’ve enrolled their children in my classes! I would not be where I am now without all of those experiences.

Website: https://www.betsymitten.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betsymittenstudio/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/betsymittenstudio/

Other: Youtube on it’s way. Shop: https://society6.com/betsymitten

Image Credits
All images by @HappilyHafsa