David and I went down to Birmingham to help Lauren celebrate the grand opening of Guthrie and Ghani, her new haberdashery shop. It was so inspiring to see Lauren in her element:
The shop is a piece of art. Lauren and her husband, Ayaz have been renovating the incredibly beautiful building for a year! It's really amazing to read about the renovations (check out all 27 pages here....you'll be hooked) and even better to see the shop filled with people who LOVE sewing! I can't even begin to describe how wonderful it was!
Lauren has done an amazing job decorating and the shop is filled with lots of goodies:
And now onto the sewing CELEBRATION bit....oh yes, I was on cloud nine meeting all the Great British Sewing Bee contestants...I mean, they let me into their sewing worlds for four episodes and I feel like I could talk pattern grading, seam allowances and edge stitching with them for hours! I'm really going to miss watching them all sew!
They are all so lovely and generous as well. Can you tell I am happy as a clam in all these photos?
Tilly and I had a great time catching up:
I just adore this photo of Ann and Tilly:
I couldn't help snapping a photo of Tilly and Lauren's button back blouses (Mathilde and Sorbetto respectively):
Can I just say Stuart is amazing? He is so much fun to be around...and look, the lantern fabric!!
The place was decked out! One of Lauren's friends made this adorable sewing cake:
We ventured upstairs and found a sewing haven. A classroom just waiting to be used! Lauren will be offering classes in her new space (with Tilly and Stuart also teaching classes):
I had such a fabulous time and picked up quite a few sewing goodies (like the fabric below):
THANK YOU Tilly, Lauren, Stuart, Ann and Sandra for inspiring us! As Ann wrote in my book: Happy Sewing. Happy sewing indeed!
