Well, at the risk of sounding like Enid Blyton, what a jolly splendid day was had by all. Last year I met with three other Instagram sewists in Cardiff, we had a mooch round TrixieLixie and then ate cake and drank tea in the John Lewis café. We had a lovely time, and all agreed to do it again soon. Well, it’s taken us a year, and this time I thought there might be one or two other sewists who might like to join us, so I posted an announcement on my Instagram account – and, well, wow!

I had replies from over 20 local-ish sewists, and yesterday, on a mild sunny Saturday, 17 of us met at TrixieLixie.  I say met, it was more like an invading hoard. We poured into the shop – don’t worry, Tracy and Stewart were expecting us, and had the kettle boiling and plenty of cakes and bikkies laid out. There were sewists from Llanelli, Swansea, Bridgend, Caerphilly, Newport and Cardiff, of all ages, from university students to retired grandmas.

It was such a joy to meet the people behind the makes that we knew from IG posts. Some of us had communicated online for years without ever meeting face to face. There were squeals of ‘ooh, you finished your Cleo’ and ‘how did those buttonholes turn out?’, ‘can I see your lining?’  etc. In fact, a sewing meet-up is the only place where you can stroke each other’s clothes, examine seams etc without ending up with a police caution!

After much stroking of fabric and rummaging through all the notions and patterns (TrixieLixie now stock Merchant & Mills and Deer & Doe patterns – but that’s a whole other blog post!) and a lot of purchases, we made our way into the city centre (taking Tracy with us, leaving Stewart to tidy up the shop!). We had another good old mooch around the haberdashery department of John Lewis, before heading up to the top floor café, where they had set aside tables for us to sit, and talk, and eat, and talk and talk.

There was lots of laughter, and some tears (@made_by_tea agreed to be @mummabmakes’  Sewing Wife, aww) and a lot of discussion about how sewing and Instagram can bring people together, especially as a grown up, when it can be difficult to make new friends. We all agreed to meet up again, soon.

Thank you to TrixieLixie, for your hospitality, and for helping to make new friendships. Happy Sewing!

You can follow Sara on instagram @saraknitsandsews