Mimi G. Ford, founder of online sewing school SewItAcademy.com, developed her love of sewing as a child visiting her dad in Puerto Rico every summer. She would watch, mesmerized, as her seamstress aunt transformed “yards of fabric into gorgeous dresses.” Ford started using the scraps to sew clothes for her Barbie dolls by hand.
Ford’s father gifted her a sewing machine, and she was 12 when she began to teach herself how to sew. “I would take apart clothing I already had,” she tells Entrepreneur, “trace around the pieces, and then sew them back together, which is how I learned construction and patternmaking.”
