Now normally my Thursday classes take place in the same venue at the same time each week. I have a lovely group of loyal sewers and we have great fun whilst they work and, allegedly, learn new skills. I often tell them of the many and various fabric emporia that I’ve visited and eventually they grew fed up with this and asked, nay, demanded an outing of their own!
In February I’d visited Backstitch at Burwash Manor near Cambridge for the first time for an Instagram meet-up organised by Gingerthread Girl, Jen. As well as having a lovely time chatting about sewing and dressmaking with some like-minded ladies (and eating cake!) I was very impressed with the wide range of fabrics, equipment and indie patterns that they stocked. I bought a couple of nice pieces of jersey as well as a butterfly-printed denim and 3 new patterns (all of which are still in the works as more pressing jobs have intervened) Anyway I thought my ladies might enjoy a trip there because, although it’s a 45 minute drive for us Backstitch is within a really pretty collection of ‘lifestyle’ shops around an old manor house in the Cambridgeshire countryside, so we could have a spot of lunch and a browse while we were there.
Sadly Jan wasn’t able to join us this time but Sue, Jane, Ann and Julie piled into my car and off we went! Because we were going straight after class finished at noon we were in need of lunch first. There’s a jolly nice tea room at Burwash Manor so once we’d had some sustenance, we toddled over to Backstitch.
It’s fair to say they were like kids in a sweet shop! So many lovely fabrics and so many projects to plan! where to start?! I’d suggested that they bring along any patterns they were keen to make (as luck would have it they are all just finishing current projects so they’re ready to move on to something new….and more challenging!)
You can see in the photo just a small part of the selection of cottons available with many plains alongside all the prints, there’s also a great choice of plain linen-types in lovely colours as well as denims and lots of jerseys.
After about an hour of rifling through everything, creating bigger and bigger piles of fabrics and quizzing me on what was suitable for which project everyone came away with bags full of varying quantities of fabric (including me, but I was more restrained with just one item) It’s fair to say that Jane had got the most carried-away and she’s going to be busy for quite a while…
After all that activity more tea was needed so we adjourned back to the tea room for a scone before heading home again, we’d run out of time to browse the other shops!
Backstitch is definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area and it’s open 7 days a week. I’m impressed by the quality of what they sell and their prices are very fair (they have an online shop too although personally I prefer to feel fabric before I buy)
I’ve not been asked by Backstitch to write this and all views are my own. I’ve included a few web addresses below too which might be of interest to you.
http://www.gingerthreadgirl.co.uk
Happy Sewing
Sue xx
Susan Young Sewing 
Great afternoon out must do it again soon Ann xx
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