She Sells Seashells by the Shepherd’s Bush Market

What a wonderful week! Did you have a good one too?

I went to London on Friday in preparation for the blogger meet up. And managed to cram in plenty for a two-day trip.

Friday I popped into the Village Haberdashery and cooed over the coloured chambray, the independent sewing patterns on the colourful racks and also the cutie little baby bouncing away in the corner. I may have left with two little treats… the Belladone pattern by Deer and Doe and the Darling Ranges pattern by Megan Nielsen.

Then I popped over to Berwick St. The shops there are a little more expensive but is chock full with beautiful high end fabrics. I couldn’t let myself buy any yardage when the fabric I was most attracted to was £55 a metre. So instead I bought two little lace letter As to appliqué onto my sewing.

Finally, I popped into the wonderfully stocked Shaukat with floor to ceiling Liberty fabrics. Even though the prices are a little more friendly I didn’t want to use up all my spending money for the weekend in one go. I treated myself to a metre of the Kussman fabric from the newest collection. It has tiny shetland ponies in fun pop colours!

I had a really fantastic catch up with my friends that night, with dinner at Gastronomica in Plimico and a few drinks afterwards. Perhaps I stayed out a little later than planned but it was definitely worth it.

Saturday morning, the meetup at Goldhawk Road kicked off with a group of early birds having a coffee together before meeting the full group. There were 39 of us and Claire was doing a great job of getting everyone organised. Kat helped with name badges and there was a great mix of familiar and new faces to be seen!

I did better than last time than and made it into every single shop down Goldhawk Road, but I still didn’t make it into Shepherd’s Bush Market! I let myself buy a 3m bundle of Liberty lawn and some high quality striped bias-binding.

We had a wonderful lunch and swap during the afternoon where I walked away with 2m of deliciously soft moss crepe that says Valentino on the selvedge (gasp could it be?) and this kick ass sewing pattern. Hello Georgeous!

And for the meet up I wore a new dress! It’s another Simplicity 2444 in navy with white scallop shells and polka dots. It’s so fun and walks that perfect line of cute but not too cutsie!

I added a collar in the hopes of being a Jessica Day lookalike but ahem, no it did not suit me in the slightest (and so despite being some of the neatest bias binding sewing I’ve ever done, I unpicked the collar).

I did a full lining again and lowered the neckline a smidge. And I used an invisible zipper this time, making the effort to enclose it within my lining too so it looks almost as good inside out.

I know I’ve been so late posting this that it’s almost the weekend again!!
To everyone who was at the meet up. Thanks for being lovely. I had a great time catching up with sewists I already knew and I got to meet lots of awesome new folk too!