Schelli Jones didn’t want her 10-year-old daughter to take a sewing class alone, so instead she decided to take the class with her.
Eight years later, it is Jones who teaches the sewing classes as part of her business, the Nina Jo Sewing Collective. While her daughter no longer sews, Jones has founded a new company while threading the sewing machine.
On a Saturday, Jones may be leading a group of 12 at Kai-Simone Winery in the Hill Country for her Sip and Sew classes. On a Wednesday evening, she can be found teaching her curriculum at Abby’s Attic Sewing School. Other days, she hosts private lessons or half-day learn-to-sew workshops, sometimes from her home.
It’s still hard for Jones to believe that she’s been able to make a business out of a hobby that started as a therapeutic practice while she was in the military. She bought her first machine in July 2018 before heading to Korea, a few months after taking that first class with her daughter.
“It was kind of like my escape while I was in the Air Force,” Jones said.
She started with sewing bags, the focus of that first on-base class. But with time, her work evolved. Through the pandemic, she estimates that she made 600 masks. She started making clothes, at first experimenting with a coat. She has found that her original creations garner more compliments than anything else in her wardrobe.
But it wasn’t until last year that Jones began teaching classes, after she retired as a public affairs specialist with the Air Force in September 2025.
She knew that she had the potential for a business endeavor because friends and strangers would always ask her, “Can you make this?”
“I can’t make this, honey, but I’ll show you how to,” Jones responded.
While her events started with the majority of attendees being friends and family, now her sewing classes sell out weeks before the event. Jones doesn’t have a teaching background — but she does have three kids and served in the military for 21 years. That experience has helped mold her into the teacher she is today.
Sewing can be a lonely hobby, she said. Creating a comfortable environment for people to learn to sew allows her to share a pivotal skill with others while also earning extra income.
It’s a skill set that used to be embedded in homes and neighborhoods. Forty or 50 years ago, she said, every household had a sewing machine. There was always somebody in the family that knew how to sew. Her sewing classes strive to revive that.
“Every single one of us wears clothes every day,” Jones said. “I feel like it’s the most beneficial hobby out there.”