Rochelle from eSheep Designs

Hello! I'm Rochelle from eSheep Designs, a "born again" seamstress, who — after parting ways with the hobby for close to three decades — is now back with a renewed passion.

While on vacation in September of 2012, I visited with a friend who had just made a beautiful tote bag after taking a sewing class. I was simply amazed to discover that people sewed stuff other than clothes and blankets. What an eye-opener! Where had I been all those years?

For the whole next week, I couldn't get the image of that tote bag out of my mind, along with the thought that, "I used to sew. Why can't I do something like that?"

I watched my mother sew clothes (for herself, for me, for my cousins, even for my Barbie dolls) for the longest time. During my high school years, I took sewing in Home Ec and became quite skilled myself. Even while at university, I recall completing a few projects on my Sears Kenmore sewing machine.

And then, nothing.

I left my sewing machine behind with my mom when I moved out of the family home. I think I borrowed it a couple of times to do the odd hem, but otherwise, nothing. I fell out of sewing like one falls out of love.

That is, until I came back from that vacation with the overwhelming thought that — if I could once follow a pattern to sew an advanced piece of clothing like a denim jumpsuit — then why not a tote bag? Why not, indeed!

The discovery led to me to embark on a personal sewing journey with a challenge: to see if I could actually progress from student to designer. After finding all sorts of wonderful (and sometimes free, like here on AllFreeSewing) stuff on the internet, I dove into various sewing projects from the latter part of 2012 into 2013. (My ancient Sears Kenmore has held up so far!) By year's end, I had committed to blogging about my journey.