Wow, what an event! We hosted our first ever stall at the Great British Sewing Bee Live at Excel in London this week, and it was a blast. I’d never sold anything in person before, let alone filled a space, so it was a huge learning curve, but the event went by in a bit of a blur!
GBSB Live – What an Event!
The GBSB Live and storewide sale
If you had told me from the start that buying my first ever stall at an expo would require so much time, effort, stress and money, I’m not sure I would’ve ever said yes in the first place. But back when the Great British Sewing Bee Live event was announced, I was tempted, talked it over with J, and decided to go for it and stretch myself as a small business owner.
It’s been a huge learning process, even just moving from a purely digital business into one that not only has to fill a space (which the organisers kept making bigger!) but also taking in-person card transactions, and ordering supplies to try and really show off what Fehr Trade Patterns really is to someone just walking past who may have never heard of us. If you’re coming along, we’re on stall H1 (turn left once you enter, and I’m in the corner with the workshop rooms).
The show is finally upon us, and hopefully now the panic attacks and stress and dwindling bank balance can give way to the enjoyment of meeting new people and putting faces to long-time customers’ names, too. But if I don’t manage to get a pattern released this calendar year, we can definitely point a blame finger in the show’s general direction as much as the book’s!
The Great British Sewing Bee Live – come join me!
If you’ve not heard the news yet, the hit BBC tv show The Great British Sewing Bee is being reincarnated as a live event here in London in September! Having worked behind the scenes on the last two seasons of the show, I knew how much love and work went into every challenge and every episode of the show and I immediately got in touch with the organisers the second the live event was announced.
Print Club is here! Harkiran Kalsi’s “Role Models” for XYT Workout Top
It’s finally here! The long-awaited second Print Club fabric kit is finally available! We’ve followed on from the success of our first kit with Laurie King to team up with a second illustrator who designed some exclusive and limited edition fabric for our activewear patterns.
XYT Workout Top – now a layered pdf!
Happy Friday everyone! I’ve got some great news for all of you who’ve loved our XYT Workout Top pattern over the years – it’s now available as a layered pdf!
The XYT was our first ever pattern back in 2013 and when it came out, layered pdfs weren’t even a thing! Our most recent patterns have all been layered, but it’s a really tedious task to re-organise everything in the older pattern files in order to add this functionality. But we’ve got some big love coming XYT’s way next week (*cough* Print Club *cough*), so it was worth the extra TLC, especially since this pattern has English, French, and Dutch translations on the pattern pieces, too!
London Marathon shorts and vest
This marathon has been entwined with writing my book since the day talks began with my publisher, as the deadline for the writing has always been the day after the marathon. Some people groan when I tell them that, but honestly, the day after is perfect. If the deadline was a week or two after the marathon, my head would’ve been full of all the things I needed to finish and stress on getting everything done. Having the deadline the day after meant everything was already finished, I could relax, and use the race not only as a celebration of all my hard training, but a celebration of writing a freaking book, too!
My publishers asked if I wouldn’t mind running the marathon in designs from the book to help with marketing down the line, and as it turned out, I was able to squeeze in not only a pair of shorts but a top as well! I’ve run all 6 of my previous marathons in me-made gear, but I usually wear a Run dem Crew shirt or vest on top. This time I wanted to both rep my crew AND show off my book designs, so I made my shorts and vest from modified designs which will appear in my book (coming out early 2018), and took the vest up to Big Teezar in Camden to get the RDC logo and my name vinyl printed onto the front.
I’m ridiculously pleased to announce…
Those of you who’ve picked up the current Threads magazine may have noticed a little something in the byline of my article, and it’s something I’m so! excited! about! but haven’t been able to mention online at all before now…
Flatlocked Steeplechase Leggings for Cambridge Half
The other week I shared some activewear topstitching tips and gave you a peek at some Steeplechase Leggings I was working on at the time. Despite running most days of the week, I generally only have 2 or 3 big races every year, and for these I like to make myself something new to race in. This means I get to mark the occasion and make it feel a bit more special, reward myself for the months of training, but also it means that I always think of that race whenever I wear the top/leggings/shorts in training afterwards.
My first big race of the season was Cambridge Half on Sunday. This is my second time running it, and back in 2015 I made my circuitboard Steeplechase Leggings to mark the occasion (and to appeal to the boffins of Cambridge!). Even though I’ve released quite a few patterns between then and now, I still find myself reaching for the Steeplechase when I want a quick sew that I know will work well in a race situation, so rather than use one of the new patterns I’ve got in development (which would also mean I couldn’t share any race photos yet!), I paired my old favourite pattern with some gorgeous blue & lime heathered supplex in my stash that I’d bought at Fabrics Galore last Fall (and as of January, they still have both colourways in stock at their Clapham store – get in touch with them to buy some as it’s LUSCIOUS!)
Three gifted Lightspeed Leggings
I’ve still got lots of holiday sewing to tell you about and today I wanted to focus on three pairs of our Lightspeed Leggings I made for Christmas gifts!
A good friend of ours spent Christmas with us this year, and seeing as how he’d helped me with the early development of the Lightspeed Leggings pattern I’d promised him a finished pair of shorts. On one of his visits months ago he’d picked out the remains of the houndstooth lycra (as seen modeled by Jason on the pattern cover), but when I went to cut it, I discovered there wasn’t enough! Boo.
As is typical for me, working within restraints often results in better designs than if I’m given free creative reign – so I decided to “make it work” and still give my friend the houndstooth running shorts he wanted, but with a curved piece of rust-coloured supplex at the bottom of the leg to make up the correct length. Since there are no side seams I was able to make a nice, smooth curve around the leg and I think the finished shorts are even better for it! (And more importantly, so does he!)
A lavender & “shatta” print Knot-Maste Yoga Set
One of the outfits I brought along to Alvanon’s fit studio last week was a new-to-you Knot-Maste Yoga Set!
The top was one I’d made in the latter stages of pattern development out of some cheap viscose cotton lycra in Lilac from Tia Knight (so obviously not for exercise with a fibre content like that!), and the bottoms were a casual pair I’d made myself from some “shatta” print viscose jersey from my stash (originally from Fabric Godmother but long sold out). I really wanted a pair of casual bottoms for lounging around the boast in over the holidays, and since all my previous samples were in solid colours, it was a nice opportunity to show you want they look like in a print, too.