The day the sun shone...

I have a lot to catch up on on here, but I am going to start with the most recent first... the amazing blogger meet-up arranged by Rachel of House of Pinheiro.

On Saturday 20th April Saturday, approximately 40 sewists descended on the entrance hall of the V&A in London. After lots of introductions we proceeded to the cafe where many more introductions were made, many coffees were drunk and a lot of chattering chattered! Rachel had arranged for a professional photographer to come and snap us all in our finery, and as we all got up to follow him outside, the cafe suddenly seemed a much quieter place.

Handmade Jane chatting in the sunshine

It was fantastic to see so many home sewn garments and very interesting to hear how people got on with different patterns.  Other peoples fabric choices always interest me, mostly because I often find it difficult to match fabrics to patterns. There were a number of Elisalex dresses out and about, which I have to say didn't grab me when I saw the pattern had been released, but the dresses looked fab in real life.

After our photo session, we were guided onto the underground and made our way to Goldhawk Road. I think one of my best bits of the day was all of us sewists pretty much filling up a whole tube carriage, chattering away nineteen to the dozen (what a strange phrase). The stunned silence from the remaining passengers as we all got off after one stop was noticeable - one doesn't chat on the tube you know!

one side of tube carriage

other side of carriage

On reaching Goldhawk Road we had a good hour and half of shopping time, during which I bought three lengths of fabric (all jersey) and admired many more, then it was  off for lunch.

bought fabric

Janene of Ooobop had arranged for us to have lunch at a Lebanese restaurant a short walk away, where again, we took over the entire place and enjoyed some pretty fab food.

Rachel explaining how lunch will work...

After lunch we had the swap to end all swaps. the restaurant had an amazing downstairs where the swap items were arranged into groups of fabrics, patterns and notions. Sew Busy Lizzy visiting from Tasmania had a huge bag of stuff from Abakhan Fabrics and Minerva Crafts had donated goody bags for us all.

preparing for the swap

I came away with three more pieces of jersey and two wovens, one being a cheese cloth-y type fabric and the other a white embroidery anglais with a sheen of gold sparkles (which you might be able to see in the photo):

sparkly fabric at bottom

 I also managed to pick up  couple of patterns:

It was so nice to catch up with people I've met before and to meet heaps of new people.  There was an ongoing discussion throughout the day on how do you greet someone you feel you know really well from their blog, when in actual fact you haven't met them before... There wasn't really an answer, but given we were all asking "is that a {insert pattern name/number}?" that seemed a pretty good opener!

Many thanks to Rachel for organizing everything - I was so exhausted, I can only imagine how she felt at the end of the day!

Photo's from the photographer  Digpal Singh are available to view here.

Rachel has a list of attendees and their blogs in her post of the day. There are quite a few that I haven't come across before so lots more reading for me!