London Dressmakers Club meetings

Do you live in or near London and fancy coming to our monthly meetings?

This is the link: London Dressmakers on Meetup.com

We schedule the monthly meetings between Tuesday and Thursday per quarter so anyone with a regular evening class is able to attend at least two out of three. January's meeting was on a Tuesday, February will be a Wednesday and you can guess what weekday the meeting in March will be. The following quarter we start over, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

You may not have heard of Southwark, it is the tube stop between London Bridge and Waterloo - extremely conveniently only a few minutes from central London. Our meeting place is a lovely cafe under the arch in Isabella Street. Detailed directions are in the Pages section on the Meetup site.

Someone will be there from 6pm and we usually stay until at least 8.30pm if not even 9 o'clock. The get togethers are very informal: you can turn up whenever you want to and leave at any time. There is no agenda and no program.  We sit and chat about all things sewing (and all sorts of other stuff), the meetings are very social.

We are obviously not able to bring sewing machines along. We haven't found a venue that would be affordable so EV is as good as it gets. The staff are lovely and let us get on with it (we hope we are good customers for them) - many of us have some kind of craft project with us. Maybe hand sewing or mending, basting or similar things - or something other than sewing. It is up to you. New people who join us often say that they wish they had brought their own craft project. We seem to be quite motivating in that respect!

Hopefully in other respects too: we love to share our love, enthusiasm and knowledge of sewing. So if you ran into a dressmaking issue and need some advice, ask us. Even if no-one knows, we may know of somewhere to look. Some of us are keen on pattern drafting too, others are into making costumes more than everyday clothes. The group's members are a varied lot and we love meeting new people. So don't be shy, come along and see what the meetings are like.  We don't charge the (very small annual) membership fee on the first evening, if you like it and come back then I much appreciate the contribution towards the organiser's fee that I pay to Meetup.


Do you live too far to travel to meetings but you would love to be part of things?  Check out our sewalongs - they are virtual events that we don't meet up for.  We pick a theme of what to sew and participants can then post comments to share what they are hoping to make, or ask questions if they want - we usually get quite a lively exchange going. There is also a photo album that anyone can post a picture of their item to - lots easier to show then try to describe something.

The sewalongs are posted for a two week period, this is the longest that Meetup allows an event to be scheduled. Sometimes we put on a second part if we feel that some members would like more time.

The current sewalongs are about checking through unfinished projects, known as UFOs, to decide what to do with them (Part 1 is almost over (January 2017), Part 2 is here March 2017). There is a separate sewalong for picking a UFO project and finishing it (February).

One of our members suggested a sewalong to Make Two garments from the same pattern: two different versions, or a toile and the actual project, or any other kind of making two things that you only need to mess around with for the fitting once. This is also in February, immediately after the other February sewalong.

We also post monthly reminders about Sewing Resolutions that we hope will motivate us into great progress - you can also take part in these by posting in the comments. There is one a month so please check the general website.


Are there any questions about the group that I haven't answered?  Please let me know in the blog comments underneath this. Thank you.

Hope to see you soon.