Women Breaking Barriers: April Bonasera, tailor-made costuming [Video]

Seamstress April Bonasera’s grandmother was handy with a needle and thread, and she ensured her granddaughter was too.”As a child, as a seven-year-old, my grandmother and my mom taught me needlework. Embroidery, simple cross stitching. Just using your hands. Like doing easy cross stitch stuff and watching her in her studio,” Bonasera said.Bonasera works out of a similar type of studio in her Birmingham home. It’s full of carefully collected knick-knacks, mementos and works in progress.”She always had different things going. And she always made clothes for me and my siblings,” she said.Last year Bonasera was in Atlanta, where she helped create costumes for the Francis Ford Coppola film, “Megalopolis.” Since moving back home to Birmingham during the writer’s strike; she’s been busy with her own full-service costume and alterations studio called Dress Dye Magic.”I study all the time,” she said. “I’m a nerd. I’m a plant nerd, a natural …