Chapter Three – Where the Work Began

That realization — “why can’t I just sew it?” — was the moment the Giddyup Glove™ truly started moving forward. Not because it suddenly became easy. Because it became possible.

I already knew how to sew. I didn’t have a sewing machine at the time, but I learned a lot from my mom about sewing while I was growing up. I was ready to learn more about fabric and construction — and just as ready to learn what I didn’t yet know that I needed to learn. And once I gave myself permission to think beyond how the glove had originally taken shape, the door opened.

What came next wasn’t clarity. It was work. I had never made a pattern like this before. I’d never built something from the ground up in this way — not something that needed to function, hold weight, feel good in the hand, and actually work in the real world. So I did the only thing I knew how to do: I played.

I played with shapes. I played with proportions. I played with variations. I made version after version, trying things, undoing them, starting over. I handed early versions to friends and said, “Here, try this. What do you think?”

The responses were… mixed. Polite, supportive on the surface, but underneath a look that said, “That’s kind of silly,” or “You’re a little crazy.” Not mean. Just unconvinced. Like this was a strange detour I’d eventually grow out of. But I didn’t stop.

Those early versions are still out there. If I visited a handful of friends right now, I could probably find my first attempts tucked into closets or bins — physical proof of how many iterations it took. Iteration after iteration after iteration. Test. Adjust. Test again.

At one point, I was at The Rainshed in Salem, wandering through fabric the way I do when I’m thinking something through. That’s when I came across Thinsulate. I remember standing there and thinking, “I should insulate it.” So I bought some. And that sent me into another phase of learning — how to integrate fabric with Thinsulate, how to layer it, how to blend warmth and structure without losing function. How to make it actually work.

More versions. More testing. More figuring it out as I went. Nothing about it was instant. Nothing about it was obvious to anyone else. It was curiosity paired with persistence — learning by doing, again and again, until the glove slowly became what I’d been trying to make all along.

That was the season I was in then. Not insight. Not validation. Just making — even when it looked a little ridiculous from the outside.