Seaside Sisters

Vintage Festival 2011, a big thank you!

We had a top time at the Vintage at Southbank festival last weekend. So many beautifully turned out and friendly people, and the Royal Festival Hall looking like it never has before.

Seaside Sisters souvenir pennant & brooch workshops, Vintage at Southbank

Thank you so much to all the lovely people who took part in our workshops making souvenir festival pennants and brooches. Around 140 people made something with us, and as well as being great company, they came up with some brilliant choices and really impressed us with what they made.

Fabric brooch making workshop with Seaside Sisters

Take a look at the new Seaside Sisters Facebook page for more photos from Vintage. We’d love to see your photos of our workshops and stall too. We have more workshops coming up and they’re listed on our Events page.

Vintage was the first time we’d run the pennants workshop, and it was extremely gratifying that this worked so well. We loved seeing an eager stream of makers enjoying putting together fabrics, trim and transfers to create lovely souvenirs. Our idea for this workshop was to tie together the fun of making something yourself, taking something away to remember the event by, and linking the 2011 Vintage Festival with the Festival of Britain 60 years ago. One of our first pennant makers described very similar reasons for wanting to join in, and that made us very happy!

Souvenir pennants made at Vintage at Southbank

The fabric brooch making also went down brilliantly, our big round table was constantly full. It was loads of fun for us to see people coming up with new innovations in this workshop, as it’s a very popular one that Fabric Nation has run for a few years. We really liked the little clusters of buttons, multi-layered centres, and combinations of colours that were chosen to compliment outfits. Making the brooches is quite a relaxing thing to do and good conversations sprung up around the table as people sewed.

Fabric brooches made at Vintage at Southbank

In both workshops we used our vintage and recycled fabrics stash, but we were also delighted to use the offcuts generously donated by Sanderson, from their 50s fabric collection. A lot of people got seriously excited by these beautiful upholstery textiles!

Sanderson's 50s fabrics range

A big thank you to:
Louise Kamara of the Eco Design Fair and Barley Massey of Fabrications, who curated and organised the Upcycling Workshops at Vintage. Thanks so much for working with us!
Wayne & Gerardine Hemingway and their team for having such excellent vision, coming by to personally see to some of the logistics of setting up our area, and generally being fantastic.
Susan Backhouse of Fashion Antidote, our lovely workshop neighbour who lent us an excellent sewing machine when our vintage one decided to have a huff.
Leona Thrift-ola, for bringing us beer and blogging until her fingers nearly caught fire.

Although we were too busy running the Seaside Sisters stall and workshops to get a proper look at everything going on, we did get some nice glimpses on mad dashes away from our post. Crazy dancing on the Style Studio balcony, great vibe and stories in the Down The Back Of The Sofa bar and museum (loved the unlucky dip!), hilarious Bad Art Salon, roof garden area / rooms / balconies we’d never discovered before, the wonderful London Printworks Trust who were doing amazing prints with transfer dyes, and we enjoyed seeing the backstage area where we chatted to famous folk in the lift.

Seaside Sisters stall at Vintage 2011

The Upcycling area had stalls set up on vintage furniture supplied by Out Of The Dark. We weren’t sure what to expect, but it worked really nicely. The Seaside Sisters stall was mainly on a pretty 1950s upright kitchen cabinet. We were selling vintage souvenirs to compliment a big theme in our work, and it was lovely hearing the stories that were triggered by them for our customers. Adam Ant stopped by the day he played in the Vintage Revue, to buy an Elvis bag and some beauty spots. We’re not sure if he wore any on stage but would love to find out!