An Unusual Amount of Plucking Up Courage

We (yes, that’s the royal we 😉 ) interrupt the usual program for a bit of sewing fangirling. This is going to be long-winded, so be warned!

The ones who know me IRL will probably know that I spent the last 5 weeks in Paris (more on that in a future post). A Finnish friend had made me aware that there was going to be a DIY expo (the Salon Créations & Savoir-Faire) during this time When looking at the vendors, I saw that Deer and Doe‘s Eléonore was going to be there. I love her patterns for many reasons, so of course I had to go! So on the first day of the expo I strapped the bean in his carrier and off we went! When I got to the booth I plucked up all my courage and asked for a picture:

The lighting was horrible, hence the grainy picture. Eléonore on the other hand was lovely, despite being very busy! Of course I bought some patterns (as well as some fabrics from Les Trouvailles d’Amandine, with whom she shared the booth). I hope I will present a finished garment combining the two sometime soonish.

Anyway, now following Eléonore on Instagram, I found out two days later (from a comment on one of her pictures) that there was going to be a sewing meetup the week after. Of course I wanted in on the fun!

Finding information about it was not very straight forward, but nothing an information specialist (a.k.a librarian, a.k.a. me!) couldn’t find out with a little bit of digging. Once again I plucked up all of my courage and asked Lladybird (who the meeting was organised for) if I could join. She quickly pointed me in the direction of CarmencitaB, who kindly let me join.

So once again I strapped the bean to my front and got going. We were very warmly greeted by our host (who, I found out, had just won the French Sewing Bee!) and got a personalised bag of bags and goodies. It turns out I wasn’t crashing a small and private meetup (phew!), as we were 25 sewists from 9 countries:

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A post shared by Carmen Bouchard / Кармен Бушар (@carmencitablog)

I didn’t take a single picture during the whole day, hence I took the above picture from Carmen’s (our hostess’) Instagram. But if you’re interested, Julie (of jetsetsewing), Charlotte (of englishgirlathome) and Freya (of handmadebyfreya) already wrote up posts about the meetup with lots more pictures. It would be too long to mention all of the people who attended, so I won’t. 😀

Of course, as seems to be usual at such meetups, we had a lot of fun fabric and notions shopping and socialising. We started off in the Sentier, followed by tea in the Maison Sajou, and ending at the famous Coupons de Saint Pierre. I did not get so many fabrics, as I made the “mistake” of buying 3 meters of wool coating in one of the first shops I entered. It was so heavy that even the thought of buying more was just too much! However, this gave me the opportunity to socialise with the other sewists without much distraction.

All the while the bean was behaving really well, either sleeping or watching his surroundings contentedly. Only when we stopped at the Maison Sajou, where we had been invited for tea, did he start to get restless. The reason turned out to be a full diaper, which the owners kindly let me change on the counter. After that he fell asleep pretty quickly again, so I could shop at the coupons sale quietly. I did get some more fabrics there, the offers were just too good to pass up! So in the end PHD had to come and help me carry everything home. 🙂 The others went for dinner, but by that time the bean was more than a little tired and rather cranky, so we headed directly home.

The next day those of us who were still in Paris and didn’t have to work (some had just come for a day…!) were invited to Anna Ka Bazaar, which is extremely cute!

Anna Ka Bazaar – photo is from their website

Again I didn’t buy so much, but this time the thought of having to bring all that fabric to Finland kept me in check. Also once again, at the beginning I kinda forgot to take pictures, so I’m once again very thankful for Instagram:

http://instagram.com/p/v8kXG_i27r/

This time from Anna Ka Bazaar. Reminded by the taking of this picture I once again plucked up my courage and asked the other ladies for pictures, having regretted not taking any with some of the other sewists the day before. However, these are just for my private viewing pleasure. 😛

So, my first (and probably only) organized sewing meetup was very enjoyable. I have, as is wont to happen at such occasions, met a lot of new people and have found a lot of new to me blogs. Now my blogroll and Instagram just got a lot busier!