Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kristine Frailing. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kristine, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

One of the biggest things my parents did right was showing me what entrepreneurship and hard work looked like from a very young age. I grew up in a middle-class family in a small town in Missouri, and both of my parents worked, but my mom was incredibly entrepreneurial and creative about it.

She loved kids, so she opened a daycare out of our home so she could still pick me and my brothers up from school every day. Watching her do that showed me early on that you could build work around the life you want. She also ran a cleaning business in our town, and as kids we were part of it. I would help prepare snacks for the daycare kids, and on weekends I would go with her to clean businesses around town. It wasn’t glamorous work, and we worked hard as a family.

Looking back, that did two really important things for me. First, it showed me that you can turn almost any skill into a business if you’re willing to be creative and put in the effort. And second, it taught me what real hard work looks like. Cleaning large businesses every weekend as a teenager definitely builds character.

Because of that, I always knew two things: I was capable of building something of my own, and if I did start a business, I wanted it to be around something I truly loved. That’s what ultimately led me to move to New York to pursue fashion, even though I grew up somewhere where that path didn’t really exist.

My parents didn’t necessarily teach entrepreneurship through lectures — they showed it through the way they lived. And that gave me the confidence to believe I could build something from the ground up.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Kristine Frailing, and I’m the founder of The New York Sewing Center. We currently have three locations—one in Manhattan, one in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and one in Montclair, New Jersey.

We’re known for teaching anyone and everyone how to sew—whether that’s in a single day through our bootcamps or over a few weeks in our beginner courses. We also teach advanced courses. Our classes focus on easy, fashion-forward projects so students can make clothing and accessories they actually want to wear. Instead of outdated or overly complicated projects, we teach modern techniques that allow people to create pieces that feel current and exciting.

Before starting The New York Sewing Center, I spent about 15 years working in luxury fashion in New York. I originally learned how to sew from my great aunt, who was a home economics teacher, and it became a lifelong hobby.

The business began when I started teaching sewing lessons on the side while working as a fashion designer. I realized there wasn’t a consistent place in New York where people could easily learn how to sew, so I created The New York Sewing Center and built it gradually over time.

Today, we teach thousands of students and work with over 40 sewing instructors across our locations. What I love most about this work is that it brings together my passion for fashion design and teaching.

Sewing has always been incredibly therapeutic for me. It’s almost like a daily ritual—something creative and calming that brings a lot of joy. Every teacher at The New York Sewing Center understands what sewing does for the soul, and we truly feel like we are passing that experience on to other people. At its heart, that’s really what The New York Sewing Center is all about.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

One of the biggest tests of resilience in my career was navigating my business through COVID. At the time, The New York Sewing Center was entirely in-person, so when everything shut down, it meant closing our physical location overnight. It was incredibly difficult to process. I remember realizing that my employees suddenly didn’t have a place to work, and I didn’t know how we were going to generate income or keep the business going.

There was a moment where I realized we had to find another way. Instead of focusing on what we couldn’t do, we started thinking about what we could do. We began reaching out to our students and asking if they would be interested in learning over FaceTime and Zoom. What started as a few experimental lessons quickly turned into full days of one-on-one private classes online.

From there, we expanded into virtual group classes and even hosted kids’ fashion camps over Zoom during the summer of 2020. We were shipping sewing supplies from my apartment and teaching students from their homes all over the country.

During that time, our community also came together in an incredible way. Through our online classes and social media, we began organizing mask-making efforts. Students and community members joined in, and collectively we made and donated around 10,000 masks to hospitals and healthcare workers who needed them.

Looking back, that period was one of the most challenging moments of my career, but it also reinforced something very important for me as an entrepreneur: when circumstances change, there is always another path forward. That experience taught me how to pivot quickly, think creatively, and trust that even in difficult situations, new opportunities can emerge.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I had an opportunity through one of our students who was a social media influencer. He took a sewing class with us and made a video about it that performed really well. Later, he reached out to take more classes, and I saw it as a great opportunity. I asked if he would be willing to teach me some social media and video skills in exchange for sewing lessons, essentially creating a barter between us.

Through that exchange, he was able to learn how to sew the garments he wanted to make, and I was able to learn how to film, edit, and create social media content for my business. It was incredibly valuable because it gave me the confidence and technical skills to start promoting the company myself.

Over time, learning those marketing and content creation skills helped us grow tremendously. Being able to tell our story online and share what we do has allowed us to reach thousands of new students and expand the business over the past few years.

It was a great reminder that as an entrepreneur, sometimes the most powerful opportunities come from being open to collaboration and learning new skills in unexpected ways.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thenewyorksewingcenter.com
• Instagram: Thenewyorksewingcenter
• Yelp: The New York Sewing Center
• Other: TikTok thenewyorksewingcenter.com

Image Credits

First image with me in it:

Lanna Apisukh
And one group photo

The remainder of photos : Kristine Frailing