Weekend blogger meetup (& other recent activities)

Hello! Before I get started with documenting a little adventure I had this past weekend, I wanted to say a big, huge THANK YOU for all of the wonderful comments I received on my last post. Wow. It's so nice knowing you're not alone, and all of your personal stories have been so great to read, and I hope helpful to others, too! I've been extra busy the last week and my plans to respond to each comment on my post or by email has not happened yet. We had a jam-packed weekend of activities as you'll see below, and have also been closely watching our pets, who are recovering from big dental surgery they had recently. They've had a few ups and downs, but seem to be doing well now, thank goodness.

♥  ♥  ♥

Saturday's big activities? A big, fun blogger day here in Chicago!

Lladybird, (AKA Lauren) was in town, up from Nashville, and wanted to have a blogger meetup. She put out the call, and we answered. Liz of zilredloh.com, Meg the Grand, Nancy of Buddha Bear Studios and I met up with her for brunch and to do a little stash swapping. I wish I had taken photos (Liz has one on her roundup of the day), but the table was full of knitting and sewing pattern carnage. It was hilarious. Really, the table was piled high! We actually had to stuff things in corners of our seats and bags in order to make room for food. There was everything from 1940s dresses to clown costumes. I made out with a few Stitchcraft knitting booklets, and was able to unload several of my own vintage knitting booklets and sewing patterns (more stash out than in, yay!).

Afterward, Nancy had to part ways but Lauren, Liz, Meg and I went on a crafty shopping adventure of the first order. Mind you, this was all pre-planned by Liz. And amazingly so. She even had bottles of water for us in her car and a treat (more on that later), for when we got famished from shopping!

Where did we go? Two ginormous sewing emporiums that Liz frequents, that neither Meg nor myself (both locals) had ever been to. I admit, I do most of my fabric shopping (and really all kinds of shopping) online. Especially in large fabric stores I easily get overwhelmed. This was perfect because I was armed with sewing buddies who were able to keep me on track. And we were having so much fun I didn't even have a chance to get overwhelmed!

The first stop was Fishman's Fabrics, a 1,000 square foot shop that's been around since 1903. Mel's mother remembers her mother-in-law taking her there in the 70s or 80s. If you've go to their web site, yes, the shop really does look like that. Scary big, isn't it? Not so scary from the outside, though.

I really wasn't a very good photographer that day, so I have no shopping photos, but I did snap a few by this fabulous wall of framed photos and letters in their entrance way. Here Meg and Lauren are checking out a letter from Ann Landers...

Here it is close up. Can you imagine typing a letter to a fabric store, requesting fabric based on a swatch? My first thought was it looked like something for Cruela de Vil...

From left to right that's Meg, Lauren and Liz decked out in handmade clothing!

I loved this photo too, take a look at that skirt!

We spent a long time in Fishman's, and Liz knew we'd need some sustenance to get us through our next stop. OMG, she baked us macarons!!



Yes, that's a tupperware full of two layers of the yummies macarons EVER. She even brought along ziplocs for leftovers for each of us. Amazing!

I totally love that we munched on them in the parking lot, too. Meg has a photo of us all eating them with UPS trucks behind us. Ha!

 

They were so good, Meg had to have a private moment with one of hers...

 

And wasn't everyone dressed so cute? I loved Lauren's dress...

And look at the double scalloped hem on Liz's skirt!

After Fishman's (where we all managed to not buy anything—it is huge but quite spendy) we went on to Vogue Fabrics, where the real shopping began. Apparently by this point I was so engrossed in shopping I never took another photo, aaargh. But be sure to check out everyone else's blog for pictures. There are lots of good ones from Vogue. We all left the shop with big bags of fabric, and I think we got some pretty good deals, too!

With fabric shopping completed, we went to Loopy Yarns for a bit of yarn shopping, and then finished the day with a beer (cider for Meg and I) at Hackney's, both in Printer's Row. It was such a wonderful day! I really had a blast. It was awesome to hang out with these wonderful crafty ladies!

And while not a sewing adventure, Sunday Mel and I met Lauren and her boyfriend Landon and Liz and her husband Felix at the Vintage Garage, a vintage-oriented flea market of sorts. Once again I sucked at taking photos there, so you'll have to pop over to Liz's blog for her roundup post. We also saw Leilani the Thriftaholic there looking lovely as always. She was taking photos of the event, so be sure to check out her blog soon, she always does amazingly detailed photo posts of the markets she attends! Look for a post from me soon about breathing a bit of new life into a Danish modern bowl we bought there.

And one last activity to mention, the weekend prior was Renegade Craft Fair and the Vintage Bazaar (which did a pop-up market at Renegade), where we shopped around with Liz and Felix. A woman asked if she could take a photo of Mel and I, since Mel was carrying a bag from Krrb, which we were given when we bought a set of vintage highball glasses (I'll have to show it to you soon!). I'd never heard of Krrb before, but it's a place to help people buy/sell secondhand things local to them. I'm all for more of that.

{Source: Photo compliments of Krrb.com, photo by Meg Goldberg}

Well there you have it, my rather poorly-documented last couple of weekends of fun activities! I came home with several fabric goodies from Vogue on Saturday, one of which has already been sewn up into my very first pair of trousers. (Yes, already!) I hope to take photos of them soon. They definitely aren't perfect and the fabric had me running into a series of challenges along the way, but they got me over my fear of sewing pants. Yay!