Ommel 2018: First day

I am tired but happy after my first day at Ommel 2018 festival. Ommel is a festival just for sewists here in Espoo. There are fabric shopping, lectures, courses and workshops and even a LAN party where the sewers can sew up until midnight and then sleep at the site. And what is best: the admission is completely free! I organized a blogger meetup and it was nice to meet new bloggers and Jenni, the amazing woman behind the whole festival (and Nuppu print company), told us some interesting details about how it came into being and took us around. I look forward to tomorrow’s meeting to meet even more great people!

Fabric, so much fabric!

Firstly, I cannot show you realistically the amount of fabric that was at Ommel 2018. All the “usual suspects” were there but there were also some new companies that were previously unknown for me like Patterns from Finland agency below. They sell Finnish fabric and pattern design and now they had made a little patch of printed fabric. I went past their booth for several times stopping to stroke the fabrics and finally had to buy two!

Melou below had brand new nature-inspired prints that were still looking for new names.

To learn and to test out new things

The festival was a perfect opportunity to test out new machines, especially for those thinking of buying a new one.

I myself have heard that there is a free embroidery machine in a local library but I have never sewn using one. Now the machine was available with instructors and I got to try it. I learned that making embroidery is not so simple even with the machine since my fabric choices seemed not to work very well. The next time I’ll have to take something a bit sturdier, but at least I know how to work the machine now.

For smaller folk, there was a free plush toy workshop. The children got to make a fish or a bird or then a toy of their own design using donated fabrics and notions:

My children wanted both to design their own toys and didn’t need much help with the sewing machines as they have already sewn quite a lot either at school or at home. Here is S sewing horns to her little pink monster:

Sewing patterns

I saw many Finnish pattern companies: Unelmallinen, Ehta and Paapii. I was also happy to bump into the women behind Named clothing:

We had a nice chat and I bought the Kielo dress pattern. (Which of course lead to me going through the booths again looking for the perfect fabric for that. I finally ended up buying Lumimarja jersey from Nuppu print company.)

Ommel 2018: first day conclusions

I came home with the subscription of Burda plus a lot of free magazines, the pattern and the fabric for my Kielo dress, some jersey from Virkkukoukkunen to make something nice for a small person, the fabrics from the Patterns from Finland agency and some smaller goodies.

I chatted with the organizers and they seemed very happy with the amount of people that arrived for the first day. Although it was Friday and many people were working during the day the festival drew big crowds of sewing enthusiasts. As one blogger, who had attended the Knitting and Stitching show in London, said, “this was even bigger and better”!

But tomorrow is a completely new day! Happy sewing!

Katja