Angela Wolf of St. Joseph has enough drive, energy and talent to fuel three or four normal human beings, but she also has the intelligence to continually re-tool, refine and re-focus in order to remain relevant in a high-tech world. She says that’s pretty critical when you’re anchored in the fashion and sewing industry.
Angela has been working feverishly over the past couple of weeks since purchasing the former LECO office building on South State Street for her state-of-the-art video studio and online training center showcasing instructional videos for multiple YouTube channels for her own Angela Wolf Academy, for the PBS broadcast of “It’s Sew Easy,” for NBC’s Craftsy and Blueprint, and for tutorials on Brother International’s sewing machines, printers and other products where she is a corporate spokesperson.
As she fine-tunes her new 7,000 square foot home across the street from United Federal Credit Union’s corporate headquarters, Angela has been busy relocating from her 15-year run in downtown Benton Harbor’s Vincent Place, a building owned by her husband Winn Wolf.
The remarkably talented YouTube persona says, “You have to change your focus every five years, to fine tune things, and I feel that I’ve done that pretty well over the years, and last year I created another five year forecast, and everything has changed from physical to digital.” As a result, she has been evolving her business to more and more online classes, additional YouTube videos, and whatever it takes to grow in that way. That’s why her new building is a perfect fit. As a former LECO facility and a long time banking facility prior to that, the building has great IT technology built in. Additionally, the space is very quiet, “Like your own creative space,” she says.
It was increasingly clear that Angela needed room to grow, she actually was considering adding onto her home to adapt, but then the LECO facility came onto the market and she knew that the wide open floor plan of the main level was exactly what she needed. She says, “It will be awesome. I think the most exciting part is just the opportunities coming up with Brother International, they’re sponsors of Project Runway, and NBC bought out Craftsy and I’ve been in talks with both of them about YouTube opportunities, and other shows, so I think there will be some great things coming up.”
Long, hard work has brought Angela to this point. Her reputation in the fashion sewing world is sterling, and it all started right here in St. Joe. She says that when she graduated from college she moved here and met Winn and while she was designing clothes for herself, she was also studying for fashion design and he would haul all her fashion books to his boat so she could study while he was fishing.
From sewing to fishing, Angela is multi-talented. She tells me, “I had an interview recently with someone from NBC and they asked ‘What are you good at?’ and I said fashion and fishing. Yes, Winn used to drag me on the boat while I’d study my fashion design books, but then through the years I learned about salmon fishing here, where we do a circuit of tournaments, and Brother International is our sponsor, for a couple of years. I am a spokesperson for Brother sewing machines, printers, and things. We fish thirteen tournaments, and it was a reality show for about four years that we were on, and you love it – it’s the competition, you work hard – play hard.” She adds, “We’ve won quite a few tournaments, and in the winter we try to sneak off to the Florida Keys and get a little sailfish fishing in, too.”
Angela designed clothing for many local women for years, but eventually stepped away from the time-consuming nature of that work when seven years ago she landed the deal with “It’s Sew Easy” on PBS. That was in July of 2011, and the show surpassed a reach of 90 million households less than a year later. Angela says, “We just finished taping season sixteen, and the show just absolutely took off, it’s been a big hit all the way across the United States. Japan picked it up and then, after that is when Amazon picked it up. So after that I had to change and make a decision. I changed my career – essentially had to go big or go home – so I decided to alter all my fashion design to the home sewing market.”
She started designing patterns for those who sew at home, so they can purchase a pattern or a digital file and she ships product from here, including sewing tools that she utilizes manufactured by a local company. She also started Angela’s Academy. She had been teaching seven classes on Craftsy, which is now part of Blueprint, a large firm bought out by NBC. Those seven classes reached more than 106,000 students.
The new space is what Angela’s Academy is all about. She says, “I will be able to tape (shows) non-stop. When these doors are closed, it’s a well-built bank building, and it is virtually soundproof. The windows are frosted over, it’s perfect.”
About a year and a half ago Angela started a Facebook Live show every Wednesday at 1:30pm (ET). She says, “I started it because the TV show was going great, but is restrictive – you can only do so much with a lot of restrictions regarding what you can wear, what you can say, and so on – Then with Craftsy you teach classes but you’re limited by time constraints.” She says she told Winn, “Oh my gosh, all of these people don’t even know who I am except for these two venues, and I had a huge following, why don’t we try it. So I tried it and I also wanted to see if I could commit to a weekly show, and now it’s been a year and a half and there’s thousands of people from all over the world that watch this, and every Wednesday, no matter if I’m on a fishing boat in a tournament, in an airport, or here, I do it and they all show up.” She typically conducts a sewing tutorial, or provides an organizing tip, a few tips on style, or similar content on her Wednesday Facebook Live segment.
Now, she’s branching into more lifestyle content, as well. She admits, “I’ll stick to the core which is fashion-based, and sewing, but there are people who don’t sew that are into fashion, and then I’ll branch from there.”
With nearly 7,000 square feet in the new building on two levels, Angela has plenty of room now to spread out. She notes, “The main level is where most everything I do will be taking place, and there’s a lot of good storage space downstairs.” She adds, “When I start to teach classes on-site or conduct training here, there are training rooms on the lower level for the sewing community or for office space. Brother International is based in New Jersey, and they have people all over the country, so if they wanted to fly someone here to learn a machine or something like that, I’d have plenty of room for that.”
As spokesman for Brother, she gets all of the latest state-of-the art machines and even prototypes. They just launched a new machine and she recently hosted a Facebook live piece on that, and it’s arriving this week. She says, “I test a lot of their machines, and I feature a lot of their machines, I do their YouTube videos for those, and it’s mostly the machines that are sold through a dealer network, and while they also have the mass Amazon machines, I focus more on the higher-end product line.”
In an age when most people would guess that the art of sewing at home is a dying art, Angela says that would be an incorrect guess. In fact, she says, “You know, it’s interesting. For younger people, it’s such a massive wave right now. There was a huge break, my age group did not sew much, I learned from my mom and then I took off from there. Younger people want to re-style, re-fashion, and I’m actually working on something with that right now.”
Today’s youth want to do it themselves. Angela says, “D-I-Y is the biggest thing. You don’t have to sew a whole pair of jeans, to learn how to sew, but you can take your jeans, cut them up and turn them into cute shorts and have some ribbon, that’s what younger people are doing. There’s another age group though, like empty-nesters whose kids have grown and moved out, and they’re sewing for their grandkids, and find they also have time to sew for themselves. It’s really coming back strong.”
It was all a really innocent start for Angela Wolf. She says, “I started with a sewing machine that my mom gave me for college graduation. Everyone thought I was going into the world of engineering, but I started designing for people here with that sewing machine, and it’s amazing that it has turned into this. The fame — I don’t even think about — until I fly somewhere and walk into a sewing show and people are lined up waiting to get an autograph on something, and I think, ‘I’m just me!’ It’s surreal, and I feel so blessed.”
Angela started at NC State in North Carolina, and her plan was to go into engineering, but then her family moved to Illinois, and as the oldest of five kids, she followed and ended up graduating with a business degree at Illinois State. She then moved to St. Joe and the fashion life actually started when she met Winn and he asked about all the things hanging in her condo. She told him, “I design clothes, and he suggested hosting a fashion show.” Working as as a bartender she didn’t have the money for that, but he rounded up the wives of friends and they conducted the first one at the Boulevard Inn & Bistro and never looked back.
In her new studio, everything is on wheels for easy placement in or out of sightlines on the set. That same flexibility will allow her to expand into retreat classes here, something she’s planning for later this year. She says, “I have sewing fans from all over the world actually, and I created a small questionnaire on a Facebook live show, and 65-percent of the people watching said they would come to St. Joseph, Michigan – a destination location – for a sewing retreat. I looked at where responded from and they live all the way from here to California, the Netherlands, Canada, you name it.” One bonus could come in the fact that her husband Winn charters fishing trips. It’s sort of a “win-win-Winn” situation for those traveling with significant others interested in sporting pursuits, it’s a combo opportunity.
Angela herself travels extensively, all over the U.S., but hasn’t ventured overseas yet, by choice. She travels to teach sewing. She says a company called Sewing Expo has quite a few huge sewing expos all over the country, and she goes along to teach for a few days, host a fashion show, and give tips on how people can do things themselves and she brings along her patterns to sell. She currently has about a dozen different designs for jeans, a lot of knit tops, and will introduce another 30 coming out in the next year.
Angela’s passion for her trade is clear and she wants people to know, “No matter what age or what your financial standing is, you can buy a $50 machine on Amazon and start sewing at any age. It’s not like in the old days when you had to have this huge machine. We actually have a tiny travel one now, that I did a video for Brother, that I brought on the boat and sewed.” She adds, “The machines now, like this one over here, (pointing to a sophisticated looking device) I could take a picture of you, Pat, scan it in, and hit embroider and it would embroider your face. They are so high-tech.” She notes, “That technology is for people who are in the embroidery industry, but that’s how amazing things are. They are so easy to use now, so don’t be afraid and have at it.”
She works hard and plays hard and says, “I feel very blessed. If it wasn’t for Winn guiding me through all of this, with admittedly a few struggles along the way, but he always kept pushing and he’s always been super supportive. Some people say you can’t make money in the sewing and crafting industry and I’m here to say that’s not true, you can follow your passion, and if you work a lot of hours and just keep going, you can be a winner, too.”
You can learn a lot more about Angela and her work by clicking the link below for her professional website:
https://fashionsewingwithangelawolf.com/
If you’d like to learn more about their fishing prowess or to charter a fishing trip, click the link below for that:
