From summers in Japan with her fashion model mother to publishing two sewing books born of a wildly successful blog, Bay Area-based designer Rashida Coleman-Hale has lived a life brimming with excitement and inspiration. After attending FIT in New York, she ended up trading the fashion world for design, teaching herself Photoshop and Illustrator and dabbling in freelance graphic design, but she can actually credit motherhood for her segue to fabric design. “I met my husband and we had our first baby. She was so easy that it gave me time to get back into sewing, and soon after, I began my blog.”