New Class Timetable - April to June

With cooler weather around the corner, it’s time to hunker down with craft projects – unfinished or new - and extend our skills in the process. We have 20 classes on offer between late April and the end of June - in sewing, overlocking, knitting, crochet, embroidery, pattern drafting, dress fitting and getting the best from your sewing machine or overlocker. Whether you’re a beginner or more advanced, there’s a class for you to enjoy.

Among the garments being made in this term’s machine sewing and overlocking classes are Style Arc’s Sigrid knit coat, lounge pants, and Adelaide jacket and Megan Nielsen’s Reef camisole and shorts (pictured above). You can learn new skills and extend your wardrobe at the same time!

The classes are on our website and a brochure is available in the shop. Enrol online here or in the shop.

Janome News

Janome is running a promotion during April and May and offering discounted prices on several of their machines. This means we can sell many Janomes at special prices, including these popular models:

• the serious sewist’s 6700P (normally $4499, special price $4099)
• the wonderful Skyline S7 (normally $3999, special price $3699)
• our fave, the DC6050 (normally $1149, special price $1099)
• the smaller DC2030 with its bonus quilting feet (normally $749, special price $649)
• the air threading overlocker AT2000D (normally $1999, special price $1899) and
• the new Coverpro 3000P (normally $2299, special price $1999)

Believe it or not, retailers don’t make much money on sewing machines and overlockers yet we have to buy them outright, store them, and have demo models on the shelf to show customers, all of which requires a sizeable investment on our part. And machine manufacturers don’t often discount their prices, so what Janome is doing for April and May makes this a very good time to upgrade your machine.

New Stock!

We have new fabrics, new yarns and new haberdashery items!

Latest fabrics include rayon prints, spotty viscose/nylons, black cupro, and double muslins in various solid colours. I find that winter fabrics don’t sell as well as summery ones so I won’t be adding lots of new woven wools and corduroys etc, but if you need something specific let me know and if I can source it I’ll get it in. One thing I‘m trying to get more of is merino knit fabric of a good weight (200gms+) but it’s like hen’s teeth. Meantime, apart from lots of T shirt weight knits, we have some lovely merino/cotton knits, organic cotton knits (with a waffle weave) and regular cotton knits with loopy backs!

Among our new yarns are Wild Earth Yarns Ashley 8 ply merino, four new colours of Mandala 8 ply, more hand dyed sock yarns from Broadway and Countrywide, 5 lovely new colours of Highland 12 ply, and Sesia Bimbo self-patterning 4 ply cotton.

We’ve finally found room on the shelves for the 8 ply Chaska Muhu alpaca, at the special price of $15 for 50gms - but all the extra stock of it still lives in my tiny office (along with soooo many other things).

We’re expecting a 10 ply Broadway merino to land soon plus a selection of 10 ply Indiecita alpaca yarn. The Indiecita is a happy accident because the overseas spinner set its new machine incorrectly for the 14 ply range it was intending to make – and the result is a 10 ply. The replenishment of the gorgeous 14 ply range has been held up by this booboo but on the bright side we’ll have some lovely 10 plys instead. We’re just waiting for new labels for the 10 ply: it was all labelled as 14 ply before

the mistake was discovered.

On the habby stands we have new trims, cords and webbing (including a rainbow webbing!). There are some gaps in our knitting needle selection but we try hard to have alternatives available if we can’t get your faves in at the moment. FYI the Swivel cables, in both the Chiaogoo and Knitpro ranges, are proving very popular.

Crochet News

Crochet is the latest craze among teens apparently and we’re noticing more young people in the shop buying yarn for their projects. Compared to the hundreds of knitting patterns on offer, our major suppliers don’t publish many hard copy crochet patterns, but we’re stocking up on what we can find. There are some lovely ‘70s revival type garments, and homeware items, and of course the cute amigurumi characters, and we have patterns for all of these.

Open Knitting and Crochet Sessions

Some customers have asked for sessions, less formal than classes, where they can air their yarn stitching problems, get tips from others, and enjoy the company of other yarn fans while they make progress on their latest knitting or crochet project. So we’re thinking of offering Sunday sessions, maybe once a month, in the classroom behind the shop (or in the shop if we can fit people in there) where, for a small fee to cover the cost of one of our experts being in attendance, people can drop in and have a cuppa and a biscuit while they stitch and compare notes etc. We’d need people to book in, so we know it’s worth going ahead each time with a paid mentor, and I’m thinking that for a 2 hour session, where maybe 4 or 5 people would attend, we’d need to charge $20 a head.

Here’s a short (4 questions) survey that we’d appreciate any potential attendees filling out so we can find the best way to run it for the most people.

Sewing Patterns

Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get any more hard copy Papercut patterns as they sold out super fast! But we still have quite a few in stock and they’re on our website.

I order the Australian Style Arc patterns every 2 months or so and if we don’t have what you want but it’s available in a multi size hard copy format I will order it with my next order. Just let us know!

The Pattern Fantastique and Megan Nielsen patterns that we have brought in are moving quite well. Again, if you want something of theirs that we don’t have, let us know and I’ll get it with our next order.

Machine Services and Repairs

Good news! Our technician David is now taking in a few machines each week to service or repair. He comes to the shop on a Saturday afternoon to collect the machines that need some TLC and returns those he’s worked on from the previous week.

David’s not prepared to work on very old machines that aren’t sewing as it’s impossible to get new parts for machines over about 25 years old. And we’re not giving him Berninas/Bernettes that may need new parts as we’re not an agent for

Bernina/Bernette (Nancy’s/Busy Bee is). But Janomes, Elnas, Singers, Babylocks, Pfaffs and Husqvarnas are all welcome – just not too many in any one week.

That’s it for March!

Happy stitching,

Best wishes from Jo, Jess, Vincent and Toni