SEWMANCE Festival: Come and Play!

Friends! I'm so excited, the first ever Brighton sewing festival, SEWMANCE, will be taking place in just two weeks time! Since I moved away from Brighton two years ago, all manner of awesome sewing-related socials, meet-ups and events seem to now be taking place. And a good many of those, including SEWMANCE, are the brain-children of a lovely lady called Stacie Madden (@brightonsewingbee on IG). I've had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with her at a couple of the Fabric Godmother open days, and she invited me to give a little talk at the monthly Brighton Sewing Bee back in January. She really is a force of nature to put together as much as she does whilst also being mum to a gorgeous little three-year-old dude. SEWMANCE will be taking place Saturday 18th June at The Tempest Inn, Brighton, between 11am-6pm. What can we expect at this inaugural sewing festival then?

Stacie has lined up lots of free talks from interesting sewing-related peops, the first of which starts at 12pm and the last at 4pm. All day there will be stalls run by awesome companies including Fabric Godmother and Coco Wawa Crafts where you will be able to buy lots of gorgeous fabric, sewing patterns and other crafty stuff. The Brighton Sewing Bee will be debuting their mini documentary 'Sewing Stories' at 4.45pm, PLUS there will be crafty workshops that you can participate in. These will include learning to make a wrist pin cushion, sewing a monogrammed hankie, making a simple make up case with zip anddddddd you can enjoy an introduction to commercial sewing patterns with yours truly!

I will be running the workshop to help beginner sewers/sewists become a confident dressmakers. So if you have nailed using a sewing machine but sewing patterns scare or confuse you, this hour-long workshop could be well worth the £12. The session covers:

• How to find your size 
• What to do if your measurements span two or more dress sizes 
• Making simple changes if you are taller/shorter  
• Selecting appropriate fabric for your pattern 
• Positioning the pattern pieces onto the fabric 
• What all the symbols mean and what to do about them 
• Transferring the markings onto the fabric

Tickets for my little workshop have just gone on sale here and there's a limit of just 10 places, so if you are interested, don't delay!!!

I hope to see you at SEWMANCE if you can make it!