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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a> 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”.<\/p>\n![\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371574740767473170\"](\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_7t90_05oQVE\/SouqxFPn_hI\/AAAAAAAAAYA\/unVq0CRZrOg\/s400\/stitches-craft.JPG\")
<\/a>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<\/a>, two skeins of overdyed wool from Miniatures and Stitches (I don’t know of a website for them), and two skeins of Stef Francis<\/a> spun silk with frames.<\/p>\n