Sewing boot camp produces items for needy
Program is one way factory owner — once homeless herself — gives back
Kathleen Fasanella came to Albuquerque nearly three decades ago with nothing but her young son and a paper bag of clothes.
Fasanella was fleeing a violent relationship. When she and her son, who has disabilities, arrived here, they stayed in local shelters and low-income housing, surviving on charity and the generosity of others.
“My son was sick all the time,” she said. “I couldn’t work.”
She would eventually get back on her feet and set her life back on track in the fashion
business. Fasanella has worked in the garment industry as a pattern maker for 40 years. A pattern maker takes a design and produces the blueprints that allow the clothing item to be manufactured.
She now owns the solarpowered Albuquerque Sewing Factory in the South Valley and wrote a book, “Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing,” that has become a staple in colleges around the country. Her factory specializes in complex patterns, such as suits and coats.
She and her husband, Eric Husman, purchased the 5,000-square-foot factory, remodeled it and opened it in 2015.
“I knew we could do more,” Fasanella said. “I thought let’s do this in a big way.”
Fasanella began offering a Manufacturing Boot Camp twice a year where attendees can learn how a factory operates. The kicker is that the items produced during the four-day event are given to a needy group or organization. Attendees produce coats during the summer boot camp and make various products during the winter camp, including house dresses for seniors, napkins for a nonprofit that serves food, and covers to go over the cages the city uses to capture feral cats.
The boot camp portion of her business has been turned into a nonprofit called Albuquerque Fashion Incubator. It was her own experiences with extreme poverty — although she’s been interested in social justice issues most of her adult life — that
inspired her to use her business to help people in need.
After she and her son arrived in Albuquerque, Fasanella was given a voucher to a local thrift store for clothing.
“Winter was coming and I needed a coat for him (my son),” she said. “They did not have any children’s coats (at the thrift store). None. So I got an adult size, took it apart and made it for a child.”
Fasanella was born in Monterey, California, in 1961. Her first sewing lesson came from her father when she was 5.
Fasanella openly discusses her diagnosis with Asperger’s Syndrome, which she said makes it difficult to socialize or work a regular job where she interacts with a lot of people. But it is this, she said, that has probably contributed to her success, giving her the depth to master her skills.
Each camp can accommodate about 25 people and Fasanella receives applications from around the world. The first year she held the camp in 2015, it was first come, first served. The boot camp filled up in 20 minutes. She has switched to a lottery system where attendees are chosen at random.
There is a two-week registration window that occurs six months before the boot camp. She said she ends up with a waiting list of about 50 people and the students come from not only all over the United States, but from all over the world. She’s had students from Canada, Italy, Norway, Mexico, India, China, El Salvador and France.
“People in my generation had plenty of factory experience,” she said. “Now there are limited ways to learn about the operations of a factory and most have never been in a factory.”
Jamie Hirano was one of those people. She came from California’s Bay Area, where she was a college student, to attend Fasanella’s first boot camp. She fell in love with the area, the work Fasanella was doing and working in a factory.
“I said ‘These are my people and I’m never leaving,’” Hirano said. “I moved here permanently in 2018.”
Hirano is now the factory’s manager of production and sits on the Albuquerque Fashion Incubator’s board of directors for the nonprofit portion.
The cost to attend the camp is $350 plus $80 for food. There is a four-day pre-production session, which participants can also attend, that adds $150 to the cost. Three slots are reserved for New Mexico residents, which Fasanella and Hirano said are surprisingly hard to fill. It’s too late to register for the upcoming boot camp in September but Hirano said they are still interested in help from local residents.
“If they are interested, please get in touch with us,” she said. “We want to see how they can help or be involved. The idea is to grow this skill in our own community.”
For more information, visit abqfi.org or call 505-877-1713.