Brighton Meetup and Fabric Swap: debrief

This weekend just gone saw the long-awaited Me-Made-June '11 celebration meetup and fabric swap finally roll around. A thoroughly awesome selection of lovely ladies and passionate sewers came to hang in Brighton from near and far. Lucky me!

Tilly, Santie, Ally, Claire, Stevie, Laura, Suzy, Justine, Dibs and myself took a the opportunity for a photos whilst we waited for our final reveller, Aileen. Later we were also joined by my best mate Vic and my awesome new mate Rehannon (who, if we're lucky, will start her own sewing blog very soon).

With so many of us, it was decided it would be easier to fit us into small sewing shops if we divided and conquered, so we split into two groups for a couple of hours, one group lead by myself and the other by Brighton-resident Stevie. My crew consisted of Santie, Tilly, Justine, Dibs and myself and they proved fantastic company. With the help of Patty, I prepared this little maps which provided some targets to aim for:


My crew started at the Brighton Sewing Centre, then swung by Upper Gardner Street market to hunt through the bits and bobs. Oh look! It's Tilly hanging with some buttons at my favourite stall which sells vintage notions!:

I was able to flex my haggling muscles and got both these rolls of anchor tape for £6 (probably about 30-40 metres in total! Tang!)

And despite running the risk of becoming a stereotype, I hoovered up some buttons of my own at the Brighton Sewing Centre:

We also spent some quality time with the contents of Ditto fabrics (where I narrowly avoided falling off the wagon for some anchor print cotton) though we decided to forego another fabric shop and Snooper's Paradise in favourite of coffee/cake/milkshake and natter in a cafe instead.

When our shopping time was up, we headed to our rendezvous to hook up with the rest of the laydeez and showed everyone what we had all scored. Food and drinks occurred and a fair amount of nattering, then it was time for the second scheduled event: the fabric swap! We started by going round in a circle, and everyone who brought stuff to swap (which turned out to be a lot) talked briefly through what that had brought so everyone could eye up what they might fancy. Then it was decided that the person who brought the most to swap (Claire) should start proceedings. She held up one of her pieces of fabric, and once someone declared their interest and received it, it was then Claire's turn to choose an item from the mix. Whoever it was had brought the fabric Claire chose, it was then their choice to pick something of someones, and so on and so forth until more or less everything had been claimed and the last pieces were given away to any takers. Even the ladies who were new to sewing and therefore had no stash as such to swap went home with something, and no-one took home anything they didn't want, so I declare it a total success! Personally, I scored some lovely things in the swap and was able to off-load some stuff that had been sitting dormant in my stash for way too long. I came away with some lovely fabric and a couple of great patterns, all of which I'll share in a few round up posts in the near future.

Swap-induced giggles:

I kind of wish I had taken more paps on the day, but my camera batteries died, and anyway I was having too much fun to stop and take photos. Thanks so much to the lovely ladies who came down and made it such a thoroughly enjoyable day. I will certainly be holding another event in the early Autumn for more Stash Bustin', fabric-trading and fun, so I hope to see you all again and maybe even some of my readers who were unable to make this one. Love, hugs and good sewing karma to one and all!!!!