Thanks to my junior high, high school, and college sewing teachers, I had the benefit of being taught by the best of trained educators. Real inspiration and contemporary methods of construction came later thanks to many of the teachers at The Sewing Workshop school in San Francisco, which I owned for twelve years. The editors of Threads magazine and Trisha Malcolm of Sixth & Spring Books gave me the freedom to hone my skills as a writer, which of course required research and samples and hours at the sewing machine. Dort Johnson, my local mentor and who helped me open my first fabric store, taught me not only about sewing, but how to teach and inspire students to want to make fashionable clothes. My mother let me use her sewing machine before I could even use the scissors, and my daughter keeps me current as she moves forward in the sewing and fashion world and looks fabulous every day.