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Happy Holidays from the Shop Talk team! We’re a podcast by Autodesk Fusion where we hang out with designers and makers live from their workshops. We give listeners candid conversations with talented folks who pour their hearts and souls into their craft. Coming from Long Island, NY is Dave Miao who wants to show how anyone can make things!

Dave’s lucrative photo editing business offered financial stablitiy, but Miao desperately needed creative stimulation. That’s when he started teaching himself how to make things— you might recognize his incredibly fun woodworking and 3D printing projects found on social media. Sit back and follow his content-creating journey!

Anytime I think about a sewing project I want to do, it looks so complicated. I want to make a costume for my son, but there are so many parts to it, as opposed to building a box. How did I get started with woodworking? I made a box. I’m unsure where to start and eventually build up that skill.

As a maker and someone who tinkers, you start looking at things and figuring out how to take them apart. Once you learn the basics of something, you start figuring out how to build things independently. For sewing, there are patterns. You can rip an old t-shirt apart at the seams; you now have a pattern. [Your son] has old clothes you could take apart, and now you have something you can trace. You can create your own t-shirts and use your own fabric. You can even iron on something calm or dye it a fun color.

Once you have the pattern cut out, you sew it up. You follow the lines; you trace the lines. Now you have something! Then, you can get into the details, such as finishing. There are lots of extra things to learn along the way.

And this is how I got into Fusion, too. Fusion is super intimidating when you only watch the pros use it without trying it yourself. I learn and add little things whenever I start a new project. I’m complicating it a little bit more so that I’m pushing myself to learn something extra new. I’m trying out new features in Fusion that will make my knowledge grow and help me understand the program more. It’s the same thing with sewing, you know? For example, you’re watching people finish a neckline, and you must wonder, “How do they do that? What fabric is that?” After doing it once, you know how to do it every other time. But that first time is super intimidating— you just have to jump headfirst.

Watch more episodes of Shop Talk on our YouTube Channel.