At 16, She Was a Homeless Single Mom With Serious Talent. Now, Her Business Brings in Millions. Mimi G. Ford's online venture was earning seven figures within just three years. Today, she's excited to reach even more people.
By Amanda Breen Edited by Jessica Thomas
Key Takeaways
- Mimi G. Ford was a single mother of three in her 20s struggling to make ends meet.
- She returned to her sewing passion in 2008, starting a blog to share her pieces.
- By 2012, she took her course-creation venture full-time and never looked back.
Mimi G. Ford, founder of online sewing school SewItAcademy.com, developed her love of sewing as a child visiting her dad in Puerto Rico every summer. She would watch, mesmerized, as her seamstress aunt transformed "yards of fabric into gorgeous dresses." Ford started using the scraps to sew clothes for her Barbie dolls by hand.
Ford's father gifted her a sewing machine, and she was 12 when she began to teach herself how to sew. "I would take apart clothing I already had," she tells Entrepreneur, "trace around the pieces, and then sew them back together, which is how I learned construction and patternmaking."
But a series of traumatic events in her early life caused her to set her passion aside.
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