Yesterday I attended the PR event at Sawyer Brook which is located in an old factory building in Clinton, Mass. I drove there with AnnB and TrishW from PR. What a lovely time we had. The morning started with everyone checking each other out as we walked in ("I wonder if she made that"). It was great to see members I had not seen since last year at the PR New York weekend, but there were many more people I had never met than there were those I knew. Barb Blom, the owner of Sawyer Brook had set up a refreshment table to welcome us and Deepika was as enthusiastic as always in greeting everyone.
Barb started with a truck show featuring various current fabrics, talking about fibre content, origin, and care. She would pass around the sample to us after telling us about each one. This took at least a half hour and I learned a few new things from Barb who is incredibly knowledgeable.
After the trunk show, we all scrambled to the retail room to search for additions to our stashes. Besides Barb, there where four other Sawyer Brook ladies, Judy, Sue, Dixie and Carol to help us. The store is set up with all the current fabrics on one end along with linings and interfacings, buttons and dress/blouse weight silks are in the middle and the back room was loaded with remnants. Barb personally helped me pick out some terrific buttons for a suit I want to make, then helped me find lining in Ambiance and thread. I also bought a lovely rayon knit to make a top, hopefully, in the next week or so. I really love fabric, but managed to refrain from overdoing it for myself as far as my purchases went. I witnessed a couple PR members creating wardrobes which is very easy to do at Sawyer Brook since Barb purchases all her fabrics with the idea of coordination. In the past, I've been known to do the same thing.After about an hour or so of browsing & purchasing, we had a show & tell. Deepika had asked us
all to bring in the oldest item we had made. I brought an old apron I made in 1973 with Marimeko fabric I had purchase from the old Fabrications which was a store in Boston in the 1970s. I also showed a shirt I made in 1994 for my youngest son who had picked out the fabric himself (think dinosaurs) and my latest project which is the LaFred Maia jacket which I entered in the PR Lined Jacket contest (yes, I will post about the jacket). It was fun to see what others had made over the years. I am estimating that there were 30 of us at this event.After show & tell, the majority of us headed over to Meadowbrook Orchards for lunch which was about a 5 minute drive from Sawyer Brook. We managed to take over a large portion of the restaurant and thoroughly enjoyed each other's company trading knowledge and ideas.
It was a great day, lovely weather and wonderful company.
3 comments:
Marilyn, thank you for sharing your wonderful day. I wish I could have come. I'm still reeling from the Los Angeles PR event. I hope I get to attend another one in my lifetime.
~Sherril~
Love that you made an apron out of Marimekko fabric in the 70s. I just made a vintage-style apron for a young coworker who's getting married, but I don't think she'll appreciate the apron's historic role in domestic drudgery.
This get-together sounds like fun. Are you coming down for the NYC shopping day on 10/11?
Alexandra, I think I may have had the oldest item there. Yikes, I'm showing my age.
Lindsay, I would love to go to NYC this year, but the timing is just not right. Hopefully, next time.
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