At Pinterest party, attendees put creative passion into practice

There's wine pouring, women gabbing and fingers sewing. It used to be called a sewing circle. Now it's called a Pinterest party.

That's right, social media is finally taking the "social" part of its name seriously.

Pinterest parties give people the tools to handmake projects they find on the site for a fee. On a recent Wednesday evening, women gathered at Fashion Camp LV in The Market LV center at Tivoli Village to sew their very own Peter Pan collars, a fashion feature that received lots of fanfare on the fall runways and has proven equally popular on Pinterest boards. The fee to attend was $35.

For those unfamiliar, Pinterest bills itself as a "virtual pinboard." It's one of the more visual social media sites, on which members "pin" photos that "interest" them to their personal pages. Hobbies, recipes, vacation destinations, sports memorabilia, puppy pics - it's all there in a bottomless buffet of images. And enthusiastic members eat it up.

Especially if they're like Andrea Ligon. She really likes the inspirational quotes she finds on Pinterest, but the food-related items are her favorite.

"I'm a sucker for anything ooey and gooey or full of cheese," she says, snipping loose pieces of thread from her stitching.

Angie Duran, who's hard at work at the next table, can't pinpoint just one theme that she prefers over the others. She follows someone on Pinterest who strictly pins Peter Pan collars. She also scours through humor pins until she finds one worth repinning. Oh, and even though she's not planning a wedding, she can't get enough of those pins either.

"My elbows get so sore at night," she says. The soreness comes from getting engrossed in Pinterest, scrolling for hours on her cellphone.

Duran came tonight with her friend Angela Amell, another avid Pinterest user.

"I'm really obsessed with the beach wave, like Taylor Swift," says Amell. While browsing the popular hairstyle, she finds herself consuming large chunks of time, taking it beyond just photos: "I watched a whole tutorial the other day."

It's not strictly a pastime. Amell uses the site for ideas for her upcoming wedding, but she also took to her account when her son's school recently assigned parents to bring food for a picnic. The options for food on a stick are endless.

Although Duran and Amell both enjoy their Pinterest accounts, it wasn't necessarily the Peter Pan collar sewing project that brought them here tonight. They just wanted to hang out with girlfriends.

"I think they're all here to bond with other women," says Fashion Camp LV founder Erin Bianchi. "Men have a better time going to the bar and bonding. I feel like we care first about tasks, then it's fun - when there's time."

Knowing this, she decided to give women an excuse to get out of the house with other women who also need the time away. When she heard about Pinterest parties, where members gather to make their favorite handmade projects from the site, she smelled an opportunity.

Fashion Camp LV opened this summer and is still gaining a following with children, teens and adults interested in all aspects of fashion from sketching to merchandising. While she has a good group of kids attending classes, Bianchi's working on their parents, too.

"That's the point of starting (the party) at 7," she says. "They all put their kids to bed before they came."

Allyson Christou's toddler didn't quite make it that far, but he's home with his dad and Christou is using the time away to learn how to work a sewing machine tonight. The other women are working on a Peter Pan collar, but she and her two friends are going to have a fold-over clutch at the end of the night.

She's here with her mom's group. Christou found out about the party on another social media site, Facebook. She doesn't have a Pinterest account.

So, why is she at a Pinterest party? "Well," she says, "it just looked like a fun night."

The next Pinterest party is scheduled for Nov. 7. Fashion Camp LV is at The Market LV at Tivoli Village, 420 S. Rampart Blvd., 475-5512.

Contact fashion reporter Xazmin Garza at xgarza@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0477.