Hi guys!  I’m Ajaire and I’d love to tell you a little more about myself, but before all that, if you’re just curious how to pronounce Ajaire you can hear me say it in the first few seconds of the video in the middle of this post.

In my former life (pre-marriage and baby, hehe) I was a computer programmer living outside Seattle, WA.  I met my soon-to-be husband and in 2009 we decided to move back east to be closer to our families in Massachusetts.  Fast forward a few years and we’re now living in Montgomery County Maryland where I’m fortunate enough to be able to stay home with our nine year old daughter, Bean and our 19 month old daughter, Kitty.

I’ve always loved making.  At an early age I started cross stitching and sewing and then I taught  myself to knit and crochet during college.  When Bean was born I was filled with all sorts of inspiration and started sewing up a storm, but lets face it: with a little one in the house there’s not a lot of sewing time and lots of mind-wandering-inspiration time and for me the best part is the design/plan phase of a project.  Sew-alongs really lit a fire under me in terms of deadlines and themes and without them I might have had a ton of UFOs hanging around the sewing machine.

I started getting serious about drafting clothing patterns when Bean was a baby.  I spent those first few years reading all the library books about design I could get my hands on as well as taking online courses.  My background in Computer Science meant that I got really excited about all the math and spreadsheets and I knew I had found something I could really be passionate about.  I didn’t release my first pattern for sale until I knew I had learned all I could to produce an excellent product.  That included a lot of time in our amazing sewing/blogging community just sewing and sharing and enjoying what other people were sewing and sharing.  I adore our community and continue to grow and learn from other designers (and my amazing testers!) all the time.