Dula

🫶🏾💜🪡🧵 hard work pays off! Still pushing 💪🏾🪡

Ashley Dula sits in what she calls her office. Unlike many home offices stacked with papers, pens, and writing pads, Dula’s office is filled with thread, notions, and sewing needles – all the tools a sewer needs to design, create, and repair apparel and accessories.

The thread spooled on her sewing machine does more than bind fabric. The cotton strand is a direct connection to her family legacy.

She knows some people think of sewing as women’s work, but she is proud to continue her family’s history in the textile industry.

“I’m a woman and a woman of color and I’m trying to do it (sewing) well,” the 35-year-old said. “I don’t see a lot of role models who look like me.”

The fifth-generation seamstress said she learned to sew from her grandmother. Dula sketched clothing and soon wanted to make what she was drawing. She’s been sewing since she was little, but the spark ignited when she lived in New Orleans after graduating from Freedom High School.

Read more about Dula and the legacy she is carrying on in The Paper.

https://ecs.page.link/4HhKQ

Dula

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