Inside the DIY Style Workshop in St. Charles, there's a whirl of sewing, designing and teaching happening most days of the week.

The shop at 804 N. Second St. is the home base for DIY Style, a website created by mother-daughter duo Cindy Cummins and Allyce King to teach the younger generation how to sew.

The website, which launched in 2007, features step-by-step instructions to create a blanket from T-shirts, a fold-over pocketbook or even lingerie.

Since then, the pair has created a line of patterns with McCalls, hosted several fashion shows and started the St. Louis Fashion Collective as a way to bring together local designers.

Cummins, 50, worked in the home-sewing industry as education director for the Sewing Dealers Trade Association for most of her career. She introduced King to sewing at age 6.

King, 23, didn't sew regularly until middle school. By high school, her skills outstripped her sewing teacher's and she was writing articles about customizing your dorm room for quilting magazines. She also designed and sewed swimsuits for friends competing in pageants.

King's friends expressed interest in learning to sew, but didn't have a good way to learn, she said.

The sewing industry was trying to target people ages 18-33, but wasn't sure how to do it, Cummins said. She was going to school for her master's degree in instructional technology at the time and saw an opportunity to reach that audience online.

"My idea was, how can we create this base of knowledge to teach people how to sew?" she said. "The young customer, the 18- to 30-year-old is not picking up a sewing magazine. Where is this generation? They're on the Internet, downloading movies and videos."

Cummins' final project for her master's degree was an instructional video podcast on sewing a reversible tube-top that ended up being one of the first things posted on DIY Style. At the time, Cummins knew she wanted DIY Style to be a full-fledged business, but she had no idea how big it would get. She used contacts within the home sewing industry to find sponsors for the site.

As Cummins launched the site, King was studying fashion design at Stephens College in Columbia and finishing her first sewing book. "I thought it was a good idea," King said. "There's no way for my friends to learn about sewing very well. We thought here was an open market."

Today, DIY Style offers in-person sewing lessons through a variety of classes at the workshop in Frenchtown. The women are also helping to nurture a community of fashion designers who live in the St. Louis area.

King said that after she graduated she looked into moving to New York, but found it would be too expensive to live and work there. She opted to stay in St. Charles and design her collection.

"I was like, 'Now what?'" she said. "How do I make it work here? I talked to a couple other girls who were starting their own lines. It was a lot of us e-mailing back and forth."

Cummins and King sought to bring the area's designers together to talk about the challenges they face working in the Midwest. They had the first meeting of the St. Louis Fashion Collective this spring. About 25 people showed up, a mix of established designers and new graduates just launching lines.

"The goal for St. Louis Fashion Collective is to try to find ways for them to live and work and sell in St. Louis," she said.

This summer Cummins and King added a small boutique to show local designers' work at the workshop. Cummins said eventually she'd like to create a fashion designer incubator that would provide a place for designers to share software and space.

As DIY Style continues to grow, King said she finds she and her mom have little time to talk about anything besides work.

"A lot of this stuff just falls into our laps," she said. "Of course, neither of us ever says no to an opportunity."