Sew Up North 2018

We’re baaaaaack!

So, as we announced on Instagram a little while ago, Sally and I are all geared up for the next round of Sew Up North! We, and hopefully some of you, will be hitting the coffee (and cake) shops of Leeds, probably buying lots of fabric and charity raffling our hearts on September 29th in Leeds city centre.

We will once again be supporting the fabulous Yorkshire Air Ambulance charity. We have got THE most incredible list of raffle prizes, even more than last year, and so we’re hoping to be able to top our fundraising record of £724. So if you’re coming, bring your raffle ticket pennies!

Tickets for the event will be released in the near future (watch this space) as will more detail on the specifics of the day, but we wanted to let you know the high level at this point.

As has already been spotted by some keen previous attendees on Instagram, Costa have cold-heartedly closed the branch on Briggate at which we formerly kicked off proceedings. But never fear! We have located another venue and sweet talked John Lewis into letting us meet up at their 4th floor cafe in the new Victoria Gate store.  (To be fair, when I asked whether we’d be OK to bring over 100 fabric mad shoppers together in their usually reasonably calm and quiet cafe on a Saturday morning, they didn’t argue!)

After grabbing a drink (and possibly a bun or a bacon butty?) we will once more disperse into the fabric shops of Leeds.  We’ll be leaving this to happen organically (i.e. we won’t be forcing you to pair up and form an orderly crocodile around the city centre!) but don’t worry if you’re thinking of coming alone; sewists are an unusually friendly bunch and I’ve never yet seen anyone stranded.

After shopping time, we will meet up once more at the Belgrave Music Hall & Canteen, where you will be able to buy lunch and/or drinks from the vendors downstairs (assuming they’re granting us the same space as last year, we will be upstairs), enjoy a grand fabric and pattern swap, grab any last minute raffle tickets and then sit back and enjoy watching more sewing related prizes than you knew were possible being won; who knows, you might be one of the lucky ones?

There are a couple of small changes from last year.  Firstly, as mentioned, we’ve changed the initial meeting point, but since John Lewis is a fairly large landmark and definitely still sells lots of nice drinks and snacks, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Secondly, to reduce the stress levels for Sally and myself, we have decided not to hand out goody bags this year.  I’m really sorry to anyone who’s disappointed by this, but they took a lot of time and a fair amount of personal investment and this year, we neither of us have the headroom for it.  It also stopped us being able to mingle and chat to people ourselves, so we’ve decided to make things more straight forward all round.

Thirdly, and again in the interests of our sanity, there will be another blog post in the next couple of weeks asking for volunteers to help out with certain tasks on the day.  So many people kindly offered to help on the day last time, and we were a smidge tired at the end, so we’re going to be sensible and accept some willing volunteers this time around! We hope no one’s offended by this!

Finally (and this is the good bit), Sally has sweet talked the Belgrave into allowing us to have more people this time around within their Health & Safety limits.  150 tickets will be available in the next couple of weeks; there is no charge for these, but it does allow us to be sure that we’re not breaching the requirements set by the Belgrave who let us use their space free of charge.

So, pop the date in your diary and keep an eye out for the posts over the next few weeks.  We have been absolutely stunned by the generosity of our raffle prize sponsors and we’ll be whetting your appetite with all the goodies on offer. And there will be a post when the tickets go live.

Hope to see you there?

Becca and Sally x