Surprise trip to the Stitches and Craft Show

Today I had a surprise trip to the Stitches and Craft Show in Sydney. I was hoping to go, but hadn’t figured out a good day to do it. Then I found out yesterday that my sister was going today so I pleaded that I could grab a lift with her. She very kindly obliged, though as she was going with a friend, I left them to go off and do their own thing while I did my own shopping.

I was actually going to do some research on show displays and that sort of thing, in preparation for doing one of these types of shows myself one day.

I wasn’t expecting the show to be very interesting to me. It changed hands in the last couple of years and is now operated by a different company. They have very much changed the focus of the show from patchwork and embroidery to more quick crafts. Less labour intensive and more “whip-it-up-in-an-afternoon”. While I appreciate that there is a market for this sort of thing, its not my market particularly.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot more of the retailers that I’d be interested in were there than I had expected. I had a wonderful time at the Room For Threads stall (had a great time at their stall in June too!) Later I found some amazing tie-dyed looking wool felts at Winterwood that were unlike anything I had ever seen before. I also got some more really interesting threads. All of these will be used for my inspiration panels in “The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion”.

Here you can see what I bought (after intending to buy nothing!). From left to right: Two pieces of Colourstreams hand dyed wool felt, background of hand-dyed wool felt from Winterwood, some spiral dyed silk by Jacinta Leishman, two skeins of overdyed wool from Miniatures and Stitches (I don’t know of a website for them), and two skeins of Stef Francis spun silk with frames.

I also got to visit Nicole Mallalieu‘s stall. I have been admiring her wonderful bag designs for some time on her website, so it was lovely to see them all in person. She has patterns for bags you can make yourself and also some hard-to-find handbag supplies.

So actually I had a surprisingly good time. 🙂