Needles & Fashion Sew Social Meetup!

I'm back here to share a few photos of the meetup Jenese and I hosted for the Facebook Group she started, Needles and Fashion. Jenese has such a generous heart and her creativity is pretty out of this world! This is the 3rd DMV Area Meetup that she's let me organize. This one was more involved though because the first two were just food and fellowship. This time, though, we found a space and told all of the attendees to bring their sewing machines and fabric to sew something together!

It was technically the DMV Area Meetup, but we had people come as far as Richmond and Philly to participate! We had 10 ladies make their way in addition to me and Jenese with a cameo or two from Jenese's young one. We had breakfast from Panera (bagels, coffee, and pastries) and a Caribbean cuisine lunch/dinner featuring both jerk and curry chicken with rice and peas and a side of salad. 

We were able to giveaway goodie bags with our usual N&F Meetup frame (not pictured :-( ) and also stuff it with copies of information about sewing techniques that I got from another lady in the group, LaToria, that I had the opportunity to meet the day before. I was gifting her a sewing machine for her new full-time business as a sewing teacher and she gave me TONS of information to give to the ladies that would be attending! She also gave me my hearts desire in yardage of black and white waistband interfacing. She really was just the sweetest lady. If you're in the DMV area looking for a personal sewing teacher please let me know and I will get you in touch with her. She teaches a number of ladies in the Facebook Group and they always rave about how awesome she is.

The pattern that Jenese picked to do the sewalong was the Sewaholic Robson Coat. Much of the time spent was putting together ALL of those pdf pages and cutting the pieces out lol. The ladies brought such interesting fabrics to make the coat with! One even had gold bias tape to bind the insides. It was exciting to see everyone's different styles. Unfortunately, no coats came out of the day, but people that brought other projects to work on were able to make good progress or finish what they came to do.

We did our usual 1yd challenge/swap and Jenese gave away a ridiculous amount of fabric yardage to each person that came.  We also had a pattern swap/giveaway with a full variety of different patterns and pattern sizes. Also, I had one of my best friends, Ahlora, make strawberry shortcake and red velvet cupcakes with sewing decorations for the event. They were AWESOME! and if you're in the Baltimore area looking for sweet for your next baby shower/birthday/graduation/etc. don't hesitate to check out her blog or email her directly at sugarlovedesserts@mail.com. (yes MAIL, not Gmail lol)

It was such an honor meeting the different women that we interact with so much on the Facebook Group. We had a good time talking and singing and learning from each other. Maybe that's why we didn't finish any coats?? lool That's probably the perfect reason and it was an awesome time! My only regret is forgetting to take a group picture!! I'm still so mad about it smh but you live and learn. I'm looking forward to planning the next one!

Check out the pics I was able to capture below!