Interview conducted by Grace Dodd in the The Crossings’s series on creativity and diversity within Bethel University’s student body. The heart behind this series is to explore creativity in a broader sense and to be encouraged and inspired by the creatives on our campus and the things that they are doing.
Shae Mulder graduated from Bethel University in December 2023 with a major in Criminal Justice. She started an online business called Sufficient Grace Threads where she sells clothes and accessories she designs.
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How do you express your creativity?
So, I express my creativity through making my own designs; I have pro-create on my IPad, and I just can doodle and design my own patterns and stuff. From there, I have an Etsy person that I go to who brings my design to life and that I can put on crewnecks.
When did you start using this as an outlet?
During Covid I started to do embroidery, like custom, under-the-table Nike, and then from there I started to make my own designs and just decided that I kind of got tired of having to custom make them, so I just decided to branch out and be more involved with making the patterns.
Do you have a routine when it comes to using this outlet?
Not typically; when I think of patterns, those just come up really randomly, sometimes at really annoying times, because I’ll be at church and think “that would be a really good idea for a sweatshirt.” And so, that kind of becomes random, but then I’ve kind of developed a pattern to continue to produce patterns for selling there’s always like the big spurts of creativity, so I’ll have a bunch of patterns saved up. But then I have to decide when I want a collection to drop or when I want t-shirts to drop so then I have those set aside, and then I send them in to either a digitizer or there’s a company that does screen-print stuff, so I send it to them and then I get all it back, order the crewnecks and place it all on there.
How do you define creativity?
I guess just expressing yourself but in the way of just letting emotions and feelings guide what you do, and just giving your brain a creative outlet to be free and not be under judgement of anyone else. And just being able to express your imagination.
What inspires your creativity?
So, I’ve always been naturally kind of creative, I’ve been a very imaginative person; like even just church. With specifically my business, being a Christian, just being able to be inspired by the Bible is something that’s been cool. God places thoughts into our minds, and so I think He’s just been able to place random ideas and thoughts for my designs that I can best use to glorify Him.