We are recording today on the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish

and Kwakwakiwak peoples, including Slalo Tooth, Squamish, Musqueam, and Komak's First Nations.

Hello and welcome to Love to Sew! I'm Helen, the designer behind Helen's

Posit Patterns, and I'm Caroline, the owner of Blackbird Fabrics. We're two sewing buds who

love to sew our own clothes and want to encourage you on your sewing journey too. Join us for today's

interview with Francisco Diaz. Hello, Francisco. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Hi, thanks for having me. Can you please introduce yourself to our listeners?

Of course, my name is Francisco. I run Cisco Soes, which is a sewing account on Instagram,

and my pronouns are they and he. Fantastic. We've always been so inspired by your sewing

account. Well, since you started it at least. And where are you from? I was originally born here in

Phoenix, Arizona, but I grew up in really rural New Mexico. In southern New Mexico, almost by

like the border of New Mexico and Mexico. So I really grew up like sort of in the middle of nowhere where

I got to like see a lot of nature. I spent like most of my childhood in the middle of the desert,

just like wandering around with all of my cousins. But now I am back in Phoenix, Arizona, and I live

here in downtown Phoenix. Fantastic. And what fills your days aside from sewing and creating,

of course? Yeah, I think sewing like fills my nighttime. And during the day, I work as a designer

for an event and design company. So basically I'm doing like video chats all day,

designing really cool builds, and putting together a lot of mood boards. So I'm sort of like

flexing that creative part of my brain pretty much all day. Wow, that sounds like a dream job.

And it makes so much sense because you obviously are so creative with your sewing as well,

which we're going to get into. But before we kind of dive into that, I'd love to go back to

the beginning and hear about how and when you learn to sew. Yeah, so whenever I learned to sew,

...