Sunny Savina Bertollini

Sunny Savina Bertollini was born in the Seattle area and lived there most of her life. For a couple of years, she lived with her family on a remote cattle farm in Montana She attended community college, but her skills are mostly self-taught. Sunny has had a variety of jobs over the years, but also raised two children to adulthood, which occupied much of her time. She had a custom sewing business while her children were young. Once they were in their 20’s she opened an herbal medicine shop in Pioneer Square, in the “Underground” passage below the Grand Central Bakery. She chose to close it when the couple initiated plans to move to Italy. Now, she is in the process of growing a clientele in Italy. Since the couple moved abroad they’ve both made amazing connections with Italians who have been very helpful and generous. One of these led to her being offered a job in a nearby vocational education high school, teaching students to design and fabricate clothing. The high school offers classes in English and they are required to have a certain proportion of “madre lingua” teachers. She was given special permission to work as an “Esperto Speciale Estero” (Special Foreign Expert) because she is an English speaker who knows how to make custom clothes. (she also is fluent in Italian, so she can make accurate translations of techniques.) In addition, she also does English revision work (proofreading for grammatical mistakes) for a translator, as well as sewing commissions for historical hand-sewn clothing. Her interests include: Helping people with herbal medicines, traveling, cooking – Italian, as well as food from many other cultures (we are foodies), Photography, sewing historical clothing (primarily from the 17-19th centuries), painting (pointillism). Sunny believes being respectful and kind to others in Italy makes a huge difference – in everything. The Italians (like many others) respond very positively to people who genuinely want to be a part of their culture and community.