The Weekend

Not only did I actually leave the dry warmth of my house in this weather, but I pulled myself away from the basketball tournament in order to spend the weekend here:

Yes, I took my virgin tour of Swap-o-rama-rama and it was well worth the sacrifice. It all began on Friday night with the Re:Make fashion show which was really good. Each of the designers created their collection from re-used and vintage fabric and recycled material. I will send a link once the pictures are posted.
The rest of the weekend was spent at the actual Swap-o-rama-rama event. I was there on Saturday from about 9 until 2. This is what it looked like when I arrived. Other than the volunteers there were only a handful of people in the morning. It was pretty quiet until around 1 p.m. I attribute this to the horrible weather and the fact that some people might not like to get out of bed on a Saturday morning.

Don't you love this old school gymnasium? These are the beginning stacks of clothing, accessories and fabric to dive into. I brought 2 garbage bags full of fabric and some clothing as well. There were more tables with notions of every kind. It was a dream come true. You could take as much as you wanted.

This is half of the auditorium. I am seated at a sewing machine. As you can see, there are stations for silkscreen and fabric dyeing. Behind me were stations for embroidery, legwarmers, pet toys, bags, jewelry and fabric necklaces. That balcony above is where the live bands played while you were sewing, crafting or digging. They also had a really good DJ in between band sets.

As I was getting acclimated I started small with these yoyos I made from a silk tie and some vintage buttons.

After that I began to let go and just try experimenting with all of the stuff I had in front of me. Some worked out, others did not. It was a great opportunity to just sit and have a good time while making things. For me, that turned out to be 4 hours on day one of sitting and making. There were volunteers in every area to help you out if you needed anything. I was having a good old time with my Janome sewing machine which ran a lot smoother than my old workhorse at home. The picture above was an experiment with 2 t-shirts I found in the pile. I would have preferred to use t-shirts that were the the same color, but I worked with what I had in order to see how the fabric would work with the idea in my head. It was a good laboratory for my thoughts.

This was something I made toward the end of the day. I figured I should also be making gifts while I was there. They had a few of these new eco totes for us to use. I added the front of this t-shirt. I will give it to someone who likes yoga.

Day 2: Yes, I dragged myself away from the tournament and headed back for another day. As you can see above, the crowd was a little bigger and the clothing piles just kept growing. I ended up grabbing some more clothes from the swap (including several pairs of nice pants) and made this shirt out of two from the pile. It is a combination of a vintage polyester shirt and a black cotton long-sleeved t that I modified.

So, yes, it was worth missing all of that basketball for. If Swap-o-rama-rama is coming to your town I wholeheartedly encourage you to try it out. You will have a good time and walk away with a pretty good (and cheap) wardrobe update as well.