My Sewing Summit Experience: Part One

What a great, great weekend! I am so tired but so very thankful I had the chance to go to Salt Lake City and meet so many talented, fun, creative people! Erin and the Sewing Summit staff did an incredible job of finding wonderful speakers, arranging sponsors and making the whole conference a fun time. I will try to do my best to recap the events of the weekend, since I know that last year I lived vicariously through blog recaps.

Thursday Night

I missed the Craftsy opening reception, flying in late Thursday night only to find out that my luggage did not make it on the flight. Sad! I was told my luggage would be on the first flight to Salt Lake City the next morning, arriving by 10:30 or so. This did not happen, but I did eventually get my luggage!

Friday Morning

My first class was my only hands-on sewing class for the weekend, and I got down to business making a ruffle scarf with one of the Baby Lock sergers on site. This was my first time using a serger, but I jumped right in! The class was taught by Baby Lock, so we got to learn about the machines and how super-fast they are. I practiced serging a lettuce edge (you can kind of see it in the bottom left of this photo), and it turned out pretty cute!

My next class was Creative Fabric Selection with Jeni. She gave an awesome presentation, complete with cute mini quilts (in person and on the big screen) and lots of advice for categorizing and mixing fabric prints. At the end, she and her class volunteers handed out these Michael Miller color cards. Fun!

Photo: Sewing Summit

Lunch at the Hotel

Each day at Sewing Summit, attendees piled into one of the ballrooms for lunch, which was usually some combo of soups, salads or sandwiches. It was so nice to have lunch right there on site, and every time we went to the ballroom to eat, there were new prizes on our chairs. Serious swag this weekend!

After lunch, I was still trying to track down my suitcase, but I headed over to the Photography class taught by Vanessa at LBG Studio. Her presentation was so helpful, because she showed you how to take beautiful shots using available lighting in your home, no matter what your setup. She had lots of tips for inexpensive photo backgrounds, props and reflectors, and I left inspired to try some new things!

My last session was a no-go, because the airport finally delivered my luggage! So I gave up my spot in Pattern-Making for Children’s Wear to collect my suitcase and take a shower…. ahhhh. It’s the little things.

Sara, Heather, Leanne and Jessica

Girl’s Night Out

Jessica of Me Sew Crazy and SewSet (that’s her on the right, above) organized a fun blogger’s get-together Friday night at Pallet, which we heard was a new restaurant in Salt Lake. The decor inside was very industrial-chic, and as soon as we arrived, we saw chairs filled with swag bags from Jessica (she sewed all 20 bags!) and the event sponsors. At the end of the night, she gave us each one of these adorable embroidery hoops with our blog logo. So amazing, right?!

My Sewing Summit roommates were all at the dinner, too (me, Veronica, Rachael and Sara). Love these girls!

Here’s the whole group from dinner that night! Everyone was so nice, and it was fun to make connections in person with people you only know from online. We ate delicious fries, traded seats to meet new friends at the other table and swapped business cards. Sewing bloggers have the cutest business cards, so you have to take one, even if you already follow their blog. Right?

And here’s part two of my Sewing Summit recap, and I’ll tell you about that little class I taught, the awesome keynote speakers and the crazy thing I decided to do after Summit. 🙂