Stitch Festival 2026

The Stitch Festival is a huge sewing and crafting show in the business design centre in Islington, London. And it’s a 4-day event filled with dress making stalls, crafting supplies, knitting and crochet kits and tools, catwalks, art displays, talks. There’s workshops you can book on for all kinds of skills and techniques. It’s a great way to meet up with old and new sewing friends in real life. I always have the best time. And this year was actually better than I could have even hoped. Never been to the show? Step inside with this video…

Even before my announcement on socials, I’d been feeling so nervous to go to the show. I’ve been in the sewing industry for 15 years now and I know a lot of pattern companies, fabric businesses. I know the team that run the show and more. Plus, I knew I’d see lots of people who either follow my sewing social media know me from my days of Love Sewing magazine editor and those who knew me from Simplicity too. And I didn’t know what kind of response I was going to get because so many people were upset about the Simplicity UK business closing. And I didn’t want them to feel like I had not kept them in the loop or that I’d been secretive about what was going on. Like nerves like that were were making me doubt whether I should go.

But in the end, I decided I wanted to see my friends and get excited about sewing again. I agreed to go on the Saturday because some of the friends couldn’t get the Friday off work, which is my normal day to go. Saturday was a beautiful sunny day in London, so I really enjoyed heading over to Islington. The room has this amazing glass roof. So, it gets bright and lovely but also incredibly hot with all the people in there and then the sun beaming in. We were baking so I decided to wear my loose viscose dress which has a drawstring waist. It’s a hack of Butterick 6806 in a lovely pink and red.

And I think I talked to about a hundred people. Everyone was so incredibly kind and supportive. I was like bowled over by love really. A couple of times I thought I was going to cry if I’m honest. All the people who’d knew me from like the start of my sewing career saying I can get through this and followers who like have seen some of my earliest makes talking about how they always will always love seeing what I make, which is amazing. people apologising to me for not knowing what had happened, which is wild because I was the one keeping uh it to myself out of fear and confusion over what was happening, how to explain it. It was really moving.

On the Sunday I popped into the show for another hour to film for my YouTube channel and wore my viscose M8553 dress. It’s so wearable in viscose, much more floaty and soft in this fabric instead of the stiffer denim. And I especially love the hot pink zip. It also has a hacked sleeve because I don’t enjoy puffed head sleeves that much. There’s a tutorial here on how I did this. The final hack was to add elastic into the seam allowance of the back waist seam. It gathers up the back to make it slightly more fitted but still loose and breezy.

If you want to see what I picked up from the show check out the video vlog. I’m really excited to sew these up for Spring. The weather is keeping me on my toes by being glorious at the show where I needed my sunglasses on… and then yesterday it was snowing. What is going on!?