Camp stitch was a blast! A very hectic full on blast but still so much fun!
Camp Stitch was dreamed up by a lovely group of Sydney sewers who put in all the hours to plan, book and make a sewing retreat happen.Due to a jam picked schedule I couldn’t stay for the whole weekend, so my plan was to catch the train down from Sydney then uber or cab from train to the venue. Getting up super early I headed to the station and enjoyed a leisurely train journey of a few hours to get to the station. A completely unattended station in the middle of the Bush. It was utterly beautiful and not a person to be seen.
I tried an Uber which I had been checking at the same time for the last few weeks and each time it had listed one as available. None available. Ok use the booking function to book one. What the booking function doesn’t tell you is that it take more than half an hour to tell you if the booking is accepted or not.
In the meantime I’ve sent a message to Courtney saying I’m at the station and trying to get to them.
She gives me the number of the local cab company I call them and they have no cabs within an hours drive of where I am. Booking function time on uber runs out with no one taking the booking.
Buzz Courtney back and she says stay there am sending someone to pick you up.
Natasha comes 15 minutes later to pick me up and tell me all that’s been happening at the camp since it opened the night before.
Getting to the venue I have enough time to duck to the bathroom before I went to class. I had by far the biggest class and it was lovely to see them all set up and waiting for me.
We leapt straight in to making jeans by setting aside the instructions and following a production style order of assembly I had put together. It makes the process of making much faster meaning we could attempt the task of a pair of jeans in a day.
With plenty of new to me sewers it was great to talk to people as the class progressed. Thankfully for me everyone already had a good command of their machines and terminology so it was easier to demo and talk people through a step and then let them go and do it.
By lunch time we had baste fitted everyone with the majority of people needing a little bit of alteration but not too much major issues.
Everyone was finding rigid high waisted denim very constrictive after years of wearing lower waists or ones with plenty of spandex in them but despite the initial “Ohh that’s tight” type feeling everyone was super happy.
We worked hard and I wasn’t surprised to see some very exhausted looking faces at the end of the day and we almost made it? Most people just had the waistbands to go. So not quite totally finished but I was still super happy with how far we had all got.
After we were packed up I had a tiny bit of time to say hi to some of the other teachers and then it was back to the station to a very packed train home again. Thankfully my machine was easy to carry in my Prym carry bag.
Tiring but lots of fun and a great feeling of pride and accomplishment at what the amazing sewers achieved in a day. Seeing all the finished pieces on Instagram has been awesome fun too!
Thanks for having me Camp Stitch!
Emma
Hi Susan,
I was in the workshop (Emma – I did the wide legged jeans in pinky/brown twill). It was so great. Your different construction order was a revelation.