I had the most amazing time at Whipstitch last weekend! Karen and I were both totally, completely thrilled. It’s really difficult to talk about it all without writing for pages and pages, but I’ll try and sum it up and share some highlights for those of you who couldn’t be there. By far the best part was meeting so many fun and amazing people, in person!!! That was really the best. In fact I spent so much time talking to people that I barely had time to take any pictures, so you’ll have to imagine most of it, but I did manage to sneak some pictures before our demonstration on Saturday morning so you could see just how amazing the Whipstitch shop really is. Speaking as a person who has always dreamed of having her own shop/studio/classroom space to float around in like a Fabric Goddess, Whipstitch Sewing Lounge IS actually The Dream Shop I have always had in my head. Try not to have Major Crazy Shop Envy like I do every time I look at these:

We arrived on Friday afternoon and Karen’s sister Sara (who lives in Atlanta and also loves to sew!!) picked us up at the airport to drive us to our hotel. We were staying at the Renaissance Hotel on Peachtree (so amazingly modern and nice!!), but somehow we accidentally entered a different Renaissance on Peachtree into the GPS. Which brought us to…Renaissance Senior Living, which also happened to be on Peachtree Street. The funniest part was Karen and I making it all the way through the (very posh) lobby and up to the front desk, only to realize that the clipboard on the counter said “Sign-in for Caregivers.” ACK!! We crept away, slowly. Thank goodness we didn’t take our suitcases with us to check in. Can you imagine? SO EMBARRASSING. Karen wanted to take a picture of the sign on the way out but I was too busy yelling, “NO!!! DRIVE!! DRIVE!!!” Heee.

This is Diana, who runs the shop:

A lovely cutting area. Do you recognize that skirt from Deborah’s book??

And here’s a little preview from her next book (yeee!):

We finally arrived at our (correct) hotel, just in time to meet Deborah, owner of Whipstitch, who is just as cute and as funny, if not more so, in person as she is on her blog. She took us over to the shop for our Friday evening Crafty Meetup, which had more “meeting-up” and less “crafting” than I had expected, but it was so so fun. I did actually try to take pictures of the meetup, but in editing the photos realized that almost all of them were all of everyone’s backsides (because everyone was standing in circles) and I just cannot be responsible for putting photos of people’s asses on the internet. Unforgiveable. Here are the two pictures I managed to get that are rear-free:

Fabric designers Melody Miller (in the bandana above, also quite possibly the most adorable individual on the planet), Rashida Coleman-Hale of i heart linen, and Ellen Luckett Baker of the long thread were all there, so that was really exciting and I tried hard not to freak out a little (unsuccessfully in some cases, sorry Melody). What can I say, I just love their work and it was so fun to meet them in person! In addition to that, I spent time talking to so many other wonderful people. Darcy of the Atlanta Modern Sewing Guild had put together such a stunning array of snacks I’m amazed I managed to talk to anyone at all. It was just really wonderful. And then the evening ended with by far the most hilarious conversation I have ever had. I’ll just say that it involved sexing chickens and leave it at that. Southern women are SO. FUNNY.

Here’s Karen, wearing her handmade Oolong dress:

Here’s the classroom area in the back, complete with Karen who is sewing a sample for our Saturday morning demo:

On Saturday morning, Karen and I gave our “Handmade Garment Success” talk and it went exactly the way we had hoped. We even ended on time! Yippee! We had a lovely group of about a dozen attendees which I thought was very impressive for a Saturday morning. Shannon even blogged about it the very same day!

Saturday afternoon we had our Treasure Pocket Pant workshop, which was jam-packed with participants. We worked on (if not finished) so many cute little pairs of pants from the Sewing for Boys book. We had SUCH a fun group! Brooke even drove down from South Carolina to take the class. It was amazing. But despite having to majorly rush and the fact that no one actually finished their pants (heh…we may have overestimated our time a bit), almost everyone went home with a nearly-completed pair and it’s been fun watching the pictures roll in as they get finished.

I flew home early Sunday morning just in time to make it to Elliot’s 5th birthday party (yes I flew home on his birthday. MOTHER OF THE YEAR!). As you can see the Birthday Boy was happy to see me:

More happy that his aunties and uncles were there with prezzies, actually. No big surprise there.

Thank you so much to Deborah (below) and Diana and Holly of Whipstitch and the Atlanta Modern Sewing Guild for your amazing hospitality, and all of the lovely ladies we met who came out to craft and talk and meet us. We had a wonderful time and can’t wait to visit Atlanta again!!!

And YOU can visit Whipstitch at their shop in Atlanta AND online! I hope you have a chance to check it out in person, it’s really worth the visit!!!