I should start by saying thank you to Marie, Kat and Claire who amazingly organised the whole day. Organising 32 people traipsing around the centre of Birmingham looks like hard work! Especially including the lovely touches such as the ace rosettes we were all given, name badges and I hear I may have missed some baked goods too!
Being the brilliant blogger that I am I failed to take any pictures of the day, I was far too busy being overwhelmed by all the fabric and mad swaps. There are lots of great photos popping up on the other blogger's sites though so do go and search them out. What I can show is the (relatively small) haul of things I picked up from the ginormous swap and the Rag Market.
I'm fairly certain I was the only person that didn't buy anything from Barry's super super store. My two mistakes here were firstly not having a plan (I was amazed how organised most people were with lists of things they needed to find), and secondly spending £45 on fabric the day before in London!
After lunch we took over three tables in Cafe Soya and swapped all manner of fabric, patterns and notions. There was some great stuff that people were trying to get rid of and I managed to pick up some tweedy mix fabric and some silk lining. I haven't really examined it yet but I'm have plans to make a lovely Charlotte skirt (good name by the way!) with this. I also managed to get a Very Easy Vogue dress pattern with jacket. I thought I had been pretty successful but then right at the end the lovely Lara offered to give me the spotty chiffony type fabric that she had picked up from the swap. How ace is that!!
After lunch we headed to the rag market where I managed to part with some cash and bought 2 metres of a really nice floral viscose for £3 a metre and some green suiting fabric also for £3 a metre I think. I can't wait to get sewing with all this!
It was really nice to meet lots of sewists and bloggers and I look forward to more meet-ups in the future. I now got lots of new blogs in my reader that I hadn't come across before and I've found even more via those blogs!
After lunch we took over three tables in Cafe Soya and swapped all manner of fabric, patterns and notions. There was some great stuff that people were trying to get rid of and I managed to pick up some tweedy mix fabric and some silk lining. I haven't really examined it yet but I'm have plans to make a lovely Charlotte skirt (good name by the way!) with this. I also managed to get a Very Easy Vogue dress pattern with jacket. I thought I had been pretty successful but then right at the end the lovely Lara offered to give me the spotty chiffony type fabric that she had picked up from the swap. How ace is that!!
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| Vogue V8491, polka dot fabric and tweedy mix and silk lining! |
After lunch we headed to the rag market where I managed to part with some cash and bought 2 metres of a really nice floral viscose for £3 a metre and some green suiting fabric also for £3 a metre I think. I can't wait to get sewing with all this!
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| Two dresses in the making |
It was really nice to meet lots of sewists and bloggers and I look forward to more meet-ups in the future. I now got lots of new blogs in my reader that I hadn't come across before and I've found even more via those blogs!
