So. Excited. Can. Hardly. Breathe.
Very soon I'll be leaving Mr Rae and the kids and going to Blueberry Hill Sewing Weekend. For those of you who haven't heard of it yet, it's a weekend of sewing hosted by fabric designer extraordinaire Heather Ross. The workshop involves sewing in a barn, eating good food, cocktail hour, endless supply of chocolate chip cookies, ack! Not only is the workshop, which lasts a weekend and is hosted at a bed and breakfast in Vermont, the coolest idea ever, I also to get to meet one of my favorite fabric designers, the amazing Heather Ross *dying of excitement* And if that wasn't enough, a few months ago Heather announced that Liesl Gibson, designer of Oliver+S fame, is going to be leading the workshop too. And oh yes then just the other day she casually informed us in an email that Denyse Schmidt will be there too. I'm terrified I'm going to spend the entire weekend immobilized by Sewing-Celebrity-Paralysis.
For those wondering, this year's two workshops are already full, but last year I kept a close watch on Heather's blog and she announced the following year's workshops pretty early in the fall.
Now I need to plan: what fabric to bring, what projects to work on? Obviously I'll bring the book, but much careful planning will be required. I may have to charter a cargo plane to fly my fabric stash to Vermont to avoid having to make any serious decisions about what to bring. Should I sew baby stuff so the fabric takes up less space or clothes for me since it's MY vacation, or should I just sew cloth napkins so I don't have to concentrate too hard on anything? Just in case, you know, my brain stops working from Sewing-Celebrity-Paralysis?
And this is so pathetic I hardly want to ask, but what am I supposed to wear? If you've followed this blog for any amount of time you know that almost every item of clothing I make for myself (see here, here, here, here, here) is from Heather's fabric. So the question is, am I going to look like a total loser/stalker if I spend the whole weekend bedecked in Heather Ross fabrics? Tell me the honest truth.
Seriously though, one of the reasons I am so excited about this is that it seems like events where you actually meet and sew with other crafters and bloggers are few and far between. The current big events are things like Quilt Market (more of a supplies/fabric focus) and BlogHer Conferences (more of a business of blogging focus there) or Renegade (an art fair thing). But there's nothing really for US. They even have a sock summit for knitters for crying out loud. Right now there's a Sewing Revolution going on right under everyone's noses. So I demand a Sewing Bloggers Conference!!! It could have sessions led by all kinds of sewing bloggers, how to put in a zipper, how to attach piping, how to draft a pattern, how to take good pictures of your sewing. What do you think? What other sessions shall we offer? What shall we call it? I think Detroit is a nice central location. Can you come?
For now though, can't wait to head to Vermont, will report back soon!
