The Stitch Festival

The stitch festival 

This week end I attended the stitch festival as a finalist in the up cycling and repurposing category with my white on white dress. The day started with an early train up to the business design centre, where we joined the entry queue. Once’s entering the space we were greeted by the view of hundreds of stalls all set up awaiting our arrival. We headed straight into the gallery space to see my garment on display with everyone else’s. It was lovely to see strangers walking passed my garment and complimenting it. We then sat down for a communications chat with the director of the fashion show, where she showed us how to do the walk and spoke to us about how the show and day was going to run. After this i had some free time to walk around the event and see some of the stalls. It was amazing to see so many people with the same interests as me. At 11.30 i came back to the gallery and collected my garment from the display and go changed into it for a 12pm start to the show. When i was all ready i returned to the gallery and got into my groups to walk the run way. Walking the runway is never something id done before especially not in my own garment and i was nervous about this, however the environment around me was amazing and everyone was so supportive. When it came time to walk the runway, i went up and the director explained my garment to the audience and i walked the runway which was a very scary but surreal experience. After the show i had to stay in my garment til the announcement at 2pm. So i was able to walk around the show but i had to do it in my garment which was an interesting experience but it was lovely to have lots of people coming up to me and talking to me about my garment and asking questions about what I’m doing and how I made it. Overall, although this was never racking to do it was such a positive experience that i feel boosted not only my confidence in myself but also my networking skills and ability to just talk to people about my work. My garment had been on display for the previous 4 days of the show so it was lovely to be able to interact and talk to people about it. At 2pm i returned to the main stage in the gallery and hear the announcements. Unfortunately, I didn’t win this year but i had an amazing time and it was an amazing opportunity to have my work shown. When made my day the most was after the announcement i went and got changed out of my dress and one of the judges recognised me and came up to me and told me how much they loved my dress and story and how she wanted me to keep creating and apply again next year, this was a lovely thing for her to do and it made me very proud.