Double-booked: a day full of sewing!
Today I double-booked myself: this month's Canberra Sewing Crew meet-up and a Days for Girls sewing day. Fortunately, they only overlapped by a few hours.
So naturally, rather than cancel either plan, I went to both, and even though I'm now exhausted, I'm glad I did.
The Days for Girls event started first, so I hydrated (to fight off the lingering symptoms of a sinus infection), packed my sewing machine and overlocker into my car and off I went.
Everyone at the event was lovely, very welcoming. I started out at the snap insertion table, where they had a proper snap press - a huge improvement over my little snap pliers! We had a little production line going with one person poking holes with the awl, the next inserting the snaps, the next pressing the snaps and the final one testing the snaps. Very efficient, considering two of the participants were in primary school, and squabbling siblings to boot!
We were so efficient that we soon ran out of work to do, so I volunteered to go get my sewing machine and start on the shields themselves.
The biggest surprise was that the shields are fiddly. Really quite ingenious, but rather fiddly to construct, especially having not previously seen the whole process from start to finish, and coming in halfway through the production line.
I eventually got the hang of it but was already running an hour later than expected for the Sewing Crew meet-up, so only made three shields. That said, not bad for my first contribution! The part that I need the most improvement in is definitely the top-stitching.
Once my shields met the muster of Phillippa (the organiser and production foreman) I packed up my machine and headed to my next appointment, with a stop past my house to grab a quick lunch and pick up some supplies.
By this stage, I'd been thoroughly drained by several hours of extroversion at the Days for Girls event, but the quite hum of productivity from the sewing crew refreshed and re-energised me, renewing my motivation to create something for myself.
For the past few days, I've been agonising over what to make at the meet-up. A fun striped ponte skater dress? An Alice in Wonderland casual cosplay? In the end, I went with something completely different - another run at the Hunger Games reaping dress, this time a slightly less true-to-film version that could be more of a casual cosplay, instead of a real cosplay.
Unfortunately, I only got as far as cutting out the pattern pieces before I ran out of steam. Exhausted but satisfied with a day well spent, I packed up my gear and made my farewells before heading home.
