What more could you want for a perfect weekend than fun, friendship and a bit of fabric retail therapy! I had a great time!

On Saturday it was #sewdowndewsbury, a sewists meet-up in the nearby market town of Dewsbury. Ali, AKA Thimberlina is the amazing organiser, this is her third one now, so she is getting a bit more chilled about the day and enjoying it herself too instead of worrying whether everyone else is enjoying themselves. If you get lots of sewists together in a fabric shop, we are bound to enjoy ourselves 🙂

Handmade by Chris

There were about thirty of us this time, we met in Wetherspoons, it was a great time to renew friendships and make new ones. People had traveled from all over, but the person who won the Brownie points for travelling the furthest definitely went to Chris, of Handmade by Chris, who came all the way from Nuremberg in Germany, it was great to meet her and have a chat after all this time following her blog.

There were too many of us to all go round together, but we kept meeting up in the various shops before meeting up for a late lunch back in Wetherspoons. Ali had organised a goodie bag swop which was a lovely touch, we all took a present of sewing goodies, some had made bags, lots had made sewing accessories.

Goodie Bag Swop

I won a gorgeous bag made by Eleanor of nelnanandnora, I love the fancy zip. Inside were lots of goodies, including a pretty fat quarter, a lovely purse clasp which is a perfect size for a new purse I need to make, some labels for gifts I make and a bag of lavender which smell divine. I’m thinking of making my mum a lavender bag for Mothering Sunday, so it will probably be used pretty quickly. There was also a cute hedgehog pincushion and a mug cosy which will be very useful as I’m forever getting distracted and letting my tea go cold!

Of course I bought some fabric! Having arrived with the mantra ‘Mustn’t buy wools or shirt lengths’ as I do have a few waiting to be made up, I fell for a simple white cotton shirting which just feels gorgeous and also a pretty length of soft blue/grey with feathers on it. A length of Liberty cotton also caught my eye too! I did get a couple of lengths of jersey for tops though…and that was just in Fabworks!

We then went round to Lucky Fashions where I first fell for some love fine teal cotton, what I loved with this one is that it looks pretty opaque when you hold it against the skin, but it’s acid etched in a pretty design which makes the pattern more translucent. The lady then showed me where there were some more in different colours and I fell for the white one too, it’ll make a lovely shirt for the summer. I did manage to find some stretch jersey heavy enough for some trousers, that was on my list of things to look out for!

It was a great day and judging by the photos I got from Ali, I seemed to be laughing all the way round!

On Sunday I went to the Spring Quilt Festival at Harrogate showground. There were some beautiful quilts on display. I particularly loved the one piece quilts, what I would call Durham quilts. They were hand quilted and the stitching was exquisite.

Of course there were lots of stalls too, I picked up a few more fabrics for my Down the Rabbit Hole quilt as I felt I needed more greens and purples, I also spotted some brighter ‘Teal’ fabrics, so I’ll quickly make another block for Kate’s Tealed with a Kiss quilt as I’ve not posted my other one to her yet. I’ve sussed out how I’m going to make it, so hopefully it won’t take long.

Just got to find a home for everything in my sewing room now 🙂