We are recording today on the traditional, ancestral, and unseeded territories of the Coast Salish and Quakwakwakwak peoples, including Slaiwitwaj, Squamish, Musquiam, and Comox First Nations.

Hello and welcome to love to sew. I'm Helen, the designer behind Helen's closet patterns and cedar Quilco.

And I'm Caroline, the owner of Blackbird Fabrics and BF Patterns.

We're two sewing buds who love to sew, and it's basically all we want to talk about.

Today we're interviewing Rashida Coleman Hale, fabric designer for Ruby Star Society.

We talked to her about her journey to becoming a surface designer, her process for designing fabric collections,

and her upcoming book. If you love to sew, this is your show.

Hello, Rashida. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Hi, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

We're so excited to have you. Can you please introduce yourself to our listeners? Sure. I'm Rashida Coleman Hale. I'm a fabric designer with Ruby Star and I guess an illustrator and published author.

And where are you from, Rashida?

Originally, I'm from Orlando, Florida, but I'm living in California right now.

Nice. Okay, the first question we love to ask all of our guests is how and when did you learn how to sew.

Oh, my gosh. I learned when I was 12. One summer, my mother, she decided that I needed to learn how.

And, you know, I was pretty reluctant. Reluctant and curious, I should say, because we know, we had a family of sewers.

So my grandfather, he was a tailor back in the Caribbean. And then my grandmother, she also did a lot of sewing and

hand sewing and crafting. So there's always something being made in my home. I lived when my grandparents,

they raised me. But my mom came to visit and she's like, you need to learn how to sew. So she took me to

May's fabric. That was the name of our little shop. And she took me and had me pick out a

pattern. And at the time, it was in the 90s. So I picked out this vest and some hammer pants.

Of course. I love it. And this really hideous orange fabric. And, you know, we picked out all the notions and everything and went home.

And she taught me how to do it.

And my God, it was really fun, but it was stressful.

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