After reading about Lauren’s visit and Deepika’s visit to McCalls Pattern Company HQ I thought it wouldn’t hurt to check with Meg to see if I could visit while in NYC last month.

I’ll tell you the story about this jacket soon.

Meg is the Social Media voice of McCalls Patterns so you may have spoken to her via Twitter, Instagram, their blog.

Well…Meg obliged and invited me to visit her workplace. The pic above was taken by Meg in their inhouse photo studio.

Security at the building was tight and the building itself is iconic so I took this pic so I could really believe I had actually visited their NYC head offices.

Once I walked by the blogger fan board I felt much calmer seeing Lizzy’s pic wearing the dress she made during Sewport early October. That was a fabulous seaside sewing weekend you organised this year Lizzy.

Meg took me through every department and introduced me to everyone. 

• the designers including Carlos Correa – a really nice bloke
• the notions and fabric team. They had just finished their 2016 trend forecasts.
• their pattern drafting team. They do the whole range of patterns and I mean from accessories to clothing. 
• the photo studio was what I expected to see after working in a local media company.
• the pattern instruction writing – I don’t envy them. They have a big job to do.
• I saw the final garments for their patterns in a special room.
• I got to look at their pattern catalog archives room with all of their previous catalogs – as you can see from the photo above. These catalogs could easily be a special collection for the Met museum one day.

Their work teams are small but they’re lovely and look like they really enjoy their work.

If you’re into corsets or Cosplay, you might have seen Yaya Han’s sneak peak of this new McCalls corset pattern. I saw this corset at McCalls HQ and the workmanship and fabric is brilliant. 

I’ve never seen calendars from McCalls so when Meg gave me this calendar for my sewing room, I took this pic straight away in case it got damaged in my luggage. It’s now home safely and I’ll start using it in 2016.

I didn’t want to take up too much of Meg’s time because it was Thursday before Halloween so I was conscious of interrupting everyone with their work deadlines.

Meg gave me some light reading material to make better use of the rest of my holiday flights. Mr V and I still had a few days in Florida and LA to go before heading home after spending time in New York.

This time I saw Margo in the latest issue of Vogue Patterns magazine. I was really thrilled to read about Margo in print! I’ve been following Margo’s sewing blog for a few years now. She’s great.

Clearly I loved having the opportunity to visit McCalls HQ. I got to see how they work and how they’re trying to become closer to us – the sewing consumer. 

Sewing is a hobby for me and I can be a bit technical at times so this visit filled my sewing geekness.

Many moons ago I used to learn how to sew at the McCalls warehouse in Bankstown and I’ve also visited the Simplicity warehouse in Sydney. Both of these places are pattern warehouses but HQ is where the design to pattern making processes and brand positioning happens.

Thanks Meg for being generous with your time and for the pressies.

Next up: Kyle and I caught up with Kashi!