My name is Debbie Schmid-Sage. I was born, grew-up and got married to my Swiss husband in South Africa. We have three children (two daughters and a son), the eldest daughter was also born in South Africa. In November 1979 we moved to Switzerland where later our two youngest children were born.

My mother introduced me to sewing and needlework at an early age. Due to the fact that there was never spare money she made most of her own outfits as well as mine and those of my siblings. The sewing machine would never be locked away. I was lucky enough to spend a lot time with my grandmother who taught me how to knit. I spent many hours knitting outfits for my favorite doll, later sewing for my Barbie and then as a teenager making my own jeans and tops. Naturally, our three children were gifted with homemade clothing, mostly to their delight, but not always ;)

As the children grew they developed their own personalities and interests. Two successfully exercising sports; our second daughter figure skating and our son ice hockey. It is self explanatory that I got involved with both sports. Repairing and mending hockey clothing and knitting beanies for their team and designing and creating sparkly figure skating outfits for the annual Club Show events. All her training and competition outfits were homemade. I will never know how many sequences and beads I sewed on over all the years, hundreds, maybe thousands...I enjoyed every minute of it though!

Now a proud grandmother of three fast growing granddaughters and a grandson, I got the urge to do something new! After many weeks of wondering what to do, our children suggested that I should start sewing again. I thought about it, and decided, why not!

To come up with the branding ‘Debbiebear’ didn’t take me long; when our eldest daughter was learning to talk she called a Teddy Bear a Debbie Bear ☺