Gudrun Erla Gisladottir

Gudrun Erla Gisladottir

I started designing quilt patterns in Iceland where I am born and raised. I owned a quilt shop there and had a small line of patterns in Icelandic. A rep from the US encouraged me to translate my patterns into English and publish them in the US which took off quickly, so I moved to the States in 2003 to pursue a full-time career as a designer.

Since then, I have been self-publishing books and patterns in the quilting industry, as well as writing and designing tools, notions, and fabric for other publishers and manufacturers.

Until 2020, I traveled the world teaching and lecturing for quilting groups and at large conferences. I had also started selling a little bit of fabric and other tools on my website which worked well with my travel and workshops. I steadily grew my community through live shows on social media whenever my travel schedule allowed. The lockdown in March 2020 took me off the road permanently so we pivoted and started doing more live shows and live quilting events on Facebook and youtube which resulted in the business exploding.

Selling more fabric and expanding our reach resulted in us moving the company (GE Designs) out of our home to a large warehouse in the fall of 2020. There we keep growing the business as our community of quilters grows with more quilting content and publications. We have increased the number of team members by 1000% since March 2020 and are very excited for the future.

Gudrun Erla Gisladottir - Notions