Tall and willowy, Adejoke Taiwo speaks with a self-assurance and ease that belies her 26 years of age.
Perhaps some of that poise can be credited to the six years she spent in post-secondary school, including two years at Red Deer College studying costume cutting and construction and another four years at Ryerson University earning a degree in fashion design.
Or that she's a veteran of a reality-TV show, Project Runway Canada.
Or that she already has a clothing line to her name called alala, a word in the Yoruba language meaning "dreamer."
And dreamt Taiwo has, setting her sights on a career in fashion design ever since she was a child.
"If that didn't work out, I wanted to be a biologist," Taiwo laughs. "But it seems to be working out so far," she adds.
Taiwo produces a small binder which opens to a title page with Sewing Book neatly stencilled on it. Inside are notes on stitching-related matters, along with some rather crooked sewing samples -- the fruits of her childhood lessons that started when she was six-years old.
For Taiwo, sewing was anything but a chore. "When my parents wanted to punish me, they would threaten to take away my sewing machine," she says.
