Yet another Amazing Sewing Meet post

Photo by Digpal Singh

Yes, I know, you've read about this a million times! (or probably 45 given that 45 lovely sewing ladies were there!).  I met some fabulous ladies, some I had met before and some for the first time, but all fun, friendly and wearing the most beautiful handmade clothes!  The V&A, Goldhawk Rd and the Cedar Village Bakery Lebanese Restaurant didn't know what had hit them (especially the restaurant as they were expecting more like half that number!  But they coped admirably!).

Me, the adorable Clare from SewDixieLou and the very lovely Handmade Jane (Photo by Digpal Singh)

I recognised at least 2 or 3 people from reading about their dresses on blogs before the meet - I knew Sally from Charity Shop Chic from the back as a result of her fabulous mad Men dress!

Thanks so much to Rachel and Janene for organising and to all the lovely people who made it such a great day.  And Minerva Crafts and Abakhan for providing the goody bags - what a treat!

I had made a shopping plan before getting to Goldhawk Rd and I am happy to say I stuck to it!

Two gorgeous lawns (the blue tulips and the green) for summer dresses.  I was planning a Hazel with a bigger skirt but I'm not convinced is the fabric has enough body, so I'm going to use the tulip print for Simplicity 2444 (sleeveless with no collar):

and see how it behaves.  If I love it maybe I'll make another with the green!  The blue boat print viscose (£3.50/m - couldn't believe it!) is for a rub off of a much loved and worn top I already own.

I also got a couple of plains:

The (rather crumpled sorry!  I have prewashed but not ironed!) turquoise linen is for this Burda dress:

(the other version of the dress in the mag is actually much nicer - this looks pretty bland and worky!  But I'm hoping for something Laurel-esque).  And the blue twill (actually much more of a royal blue but looks quite purple in the pic) is for a Megan Nielsen Kelly skirt with either red or white buttons.
And I did really well in the swap.  There were loads of patterns in my size:

I know one is from Stevie (I think the front left - let me know if you gave in any of the others!).  Lots of people seemed to be trying not to pick up any patterns, hence why I did so well!  But I was a lot more restrained on fabric.  I try not to buy fabric just because I like it - I usually have a project in mind for it.

I got about 1m of each of the blue rose print cotton (maybe a lawn?  lovely and soft anyway!), the red spotty cotton, and I think 1.5m of the green (it's not really that turquoise!) twill.  And I grabbed a couple of spools of thread and zips and some pink ribbons to placate the small person at not having gone via a toy shop as she requested!

What a fab day!  My faith in sewists (and my blogroll) are much fuller for it!

A lovely day!

I had a great day on Friday!

Following my pre-order months ago, I was thrilled to arrive at work and find that Amazon had come through with my copy of Gertie's book!

 

I have read it cover to cover and absolutely love it!  It is really inspiring, especially on the subject of tailoring. 

I had never realised all the stabilising and padding and reinforcing that goes in to creating a tailored garment.  But Gertie makes it all seem attainable even to a newbie like me!  I know it will be a long time before I can even think about attempting something like her suit jacket:

but i am sorely in need of tops and there are some gorgeous ones in the book that I can see in my near future!

The Portrait Blouse

The Keyhole Top

And I love the bound buttonholes on the back of the bow tie top:

And the Tiki dress is great!

In fact, maybe i should work through her book in the way she worked through VNBBS at the beginning of her blog!  I espcially love the fact that she models all the clothes.  She looks fantastic throughout!

And to top that off, I met up with Karen and a group of other lovely ladies to drool over the ballgowns at the V&A and talk sewing.  I completely forgot my camera so unfortunately don't have any pictures but it was lovely to talk about sewing and not see people sidling away - or maybe I just have that effect on people!  My particular favourite dresses were the black beaded bias cut dress (top pic, second from the left) and the Holly Fulton one with the Rocky Horror-esque lip print and leather trim (bottom pic on the catwalk).

Source:belleandbunty.co.uk

 

Source: idontwearfashion.blogspot.co.uk

Thanks to Karen for organising such a lovely night.