Blogger meetup at the Balenciaga Exhibit

On Saturday I met with fellow sewing bloggers at the De Young Museum in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park to view the exhibit Balenciaga and Spain and then have some lunch and great conversation about sewing, style and fabric obsessions.  
It was so much fun to meet everyone, some were known to me through their blogs which I have been admiring for a while.  Here is our group outside the museum in the courtyard.

From left to right,  Jean of j.kaoridesigns, me, Jennifer , Shams of communingwithfabric, Sydney, Rose, JillyB, and Natasha.  For those who are not writing blogs - we urged them to give it a try or at least send us a link to a flickr group so we can see more of their fantastic creations.

The exhibit was inspiring on so many levels.  I was dazzled by the construction techniques and spent a long time trying to figure out how the Balenciaga achieved the shapes  he did with fabric.   The quality of the fabrics was incredible, and considering some of the clothes were more than 60 years old, totally wearable today.  

My fellow sewers have some great photos on their blogs of the actual exhibit, here on Shams' blog, and on JillyBeJoyful Jilly has some great photos of some of the more avant-garde pieces which were interesting to see in 360 degree version at the museum.

At lunch we had a great conversation covering fabric, patterns, designers, aquisition and storage, and we hardly touched on sewing machines.  Topic for another day!

When we first met in the lobby of the museum, someone commented that they thought I was from southern California, perhaps because of my obsession with sunshine and all things summery.  

In any case - I am a San Francisco/Northern California kind of girl.   So today's SunnyGal garden photo is celebrating our Mediterranean climate here.  Photos taken at my parent's home which is nearby - no spot for an olive tree here and their olive trees are around 50 years old but still producing.  I was photographing the pear blossoms shown on the left and not until I downloaded the photos did I see the olives in the background, I like the silvery leaves in the sunshine.  Looks like we will have plenty of pears this year, and nobody really likes pears in the family - so anyone who notices gets pears later in the year :)