If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a fabric designer, please read on. Or a quilt pattern designer. Or any other kind of surface pattern designer, for career or personal enrichment, read on. No matter your age or your circumstance, your dream is attainable.
Today I’d like to share a little bit of my story with you, with hopes that it might encourage you to keep following your dreams. We don’t always know where our dreams will lead us, or where or when the journey will end, and that is part of the beauty of a dream. Dreams come true by setting goals and moving toward them. The most important thing I’ve learned about those goals is to not let them overwhelm you. Rather, let them inspire your small steps.
I fell in love with sewing at a very young age, as I watched my mother sew my clothes and dolls. I think I took for granted that this was how things came to be, by creating them. We didn’t shop, we sewed. So as soon as I was able, I began to sew my own clothes, progressing to my wedding gown, my husband’s suits and ties and clothes, and then to my own children’s clothes, wedding gowns and so on. Most recently, a joyful progression to sewing for grandchildren.
Along that journey I owned two fabric shops. Teaching and sharing the love of sewing & quilting with others was what I loved most. Meanwhile, my daughter, Bonnie Christine, had embarked on a journey of her own that (I like to think) began in my shops. A love of fabric grew in her and has resulted in a career of fabric design, and perhaps more importantly now, a passion for sharing with you how to embark on your own dream through her Immersion Course.
At the age of 61, I decided to sell my fabric shop and completely reinvent my business online with a monthly sewing subscription box based on teaching sewing skills. Maxie Mail was born and I was teaching again, but this time to a much larger audience!
To help keep my costs down, I needed to learn how to design the pages of my own sewing patterns, flyers, business cards and website graphics. I needed to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator.
Luckily, Bonnie was just about to teach the Immersion Course. I took her course, put in the time and learned how to use Illustrator! I learned how to draw, illustrate and write my own patterns and am so happy to present them to my subscribers! It has truly paid off in a very rewarding way.
Today my business is thriving and it makes me fairly emotional to think about what I’ve been able to accomplish at my age and share with people all over the world through my subscription box.
I want to encourage everyone, at any stage in life, with any reason for wishing to master design (e.g. surface pattern, graphic design or simply personal enrichment) to just jump in; you won’t regret it! If you dream of being a successful artist, let Bonnie’s course, Surface Pattern Design Immersion help you tackle it. Enrollment opens for one week, once a year, and it opens today! (Feb. 19-26th, 2019.) Sign up today through any of the Immersion links in this post and you’ll automatically receive a free 3 Month subscription to my Maxie Mail Subscription Sewing Box!
I’d like to add that my journey is far from over, and I just take the road one curve at a time, waiting to discover what might lie ahead.
