More holiday crafting

Although I obviously did my holiday crafting in advance of the holidays, I didn’t want to post this until after my gifts had been given. 

Our family is very much a dog-family… sometimes I wonder what we’d all talk about if it weren’t for the silly, funny, annoying, and cute things all of our dogs do.  Of course this also means that the dogs all get holiday gifts (even when the people decide not to exchange gifts…)

This year for all five of the dogs in our extended family (two belong with one uncle and aunt, and another with a different uncle and aunt, and then two more are mine…) I made super-soft, cute and cuddly flannel blankets.  We won a similar blanket two years back at a dog event, and it has become a favorite of our dogs (which is a bit of a pain, since there is one blanket and two dogs…) plus it’s heavy enough that my play-centric dog doesn’t bring it out to shake nearly as much as he does with the fleece ones.

Front and reverse of the blue blanket

For my dogs and the one only-child dog I made grey and black blankets, while for the other two I made blue ones with more of a holiday theme.  I figured that even if they don’t go with home decor, they would still make good car blankets to reduce the amount of dog hair on the car seats.

One side of the blanket is smooth, while the other is fluffy – caused by the fraying of the fabric in the washer. The blankets are also really soft and warm. I’m actually HOPING to make something similar for myself, (In a larger version of course!)  and apparently these blankets are great for babies because they love to grab onto the texture of the fluffy side.

Inspiration at Creative Stitches

Poppies

As I mentioned in a previous post, I attended this year’s Creative Stitches & Crafting Alive! trade show – and I’ve already discussed some other elements of the show, but there were a few other photos I didn’t have a chance to share, that I thought I’d toss up for inspirations sake.

Three-dimensional poppy wall-hanging from Veronica’s Sewing Supplies which I really liked – though I didn’t end up getting the pattern or the kit.  I had already picked up a few other things, and I was trying to show some restraint with ‘new projects’. (Since I already have so many on the go…)

Elk

I think that this pretty Elk pattern was from The Sugar Pine Company (located in Canmore) although I could be wrong…

Elk

This one is called Monarch of the Valley, and it is of an elk – they also had a bear, a buffalo, and another elk as well.  (Click here for a shop selling this pattern – no recommendation intended – just one I found online since the Sugar Pine Co. didn’t seem to have it on theirs.)  I liked this mostly because of the black outlines around the element – I am guessing that several of the pattern pieces is cut out of black and then the fabric – with then the fabric cut slightly narrower – so that when layered on top of the black, an outline of black shows around each of those selected elements.

In Carola’s class on texture, she also brought out starfish, and the example below. Time was running short when we were in the workshop, so I didn’t get the chance to see it up close, but instead saw it in her booth later on.
The starfish were each sewn, slashed and stuffed, the quilting was done on “ugly” (her words) hand-dyed fabric resembling mucky water along the shoreline, and turned-and-stuffed pebbles as well.
The seaweed in this piece was made the same way she made the moss in the texture example art quilt that we spent the most time on in the workshop itself.  (By stitching with quilt-weight thread on several layers of wash-away stabilizer in a repeated pattern to build up the thread before washing out the stabilizer and then attaching the ‘seaweed’.

Starfish

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Steampunk hat

In the scrapbook area, there was a shop booth that had this awesome steampunk mannequin – made almost entirely from paper-crafting supplies! The outfit included a corset and bustle skirt, but what I really liked was the hat!

Steampunk hat

Decorated with gears, flowers, and goggle,s what I really loved about the hat was the huge scrapbook chipboard ‘clock’.

cogs

I found cogs similar to the chipboard clock…

clock faces

… and then also found the clock too.  Such a cool idea I’d love to try to replicate it – but… eh. I didn’t bother picking this up, again trying to show some restraint in the new-project-file.  I have so many projects on the go – including hats… that I didn’t want to add this – especially since the chipwood would restrict the wearing of the hat – being paper and all.  Plus, I think I know where I can get the chipboard clock faces (or the cogs if I wanted to go that way instead…) if I decide to attempt to do something similar in the future.

So.. that’s pretty much it in terms of the inspiration from the Creative Stitches show – and the last post I’ll have for the show (at least for this year!)

So… feeling inspired means I should have some completed projects to post at some time.. right?

Quilt examples at Creative Stitches

So earlier I wrote about the Creative Stitches & Crafting Alive! trade show in mid/late October and some general thoughts.  I then showed off some of the examples from one of the workshops I attended.

I didn’t mention that there were also two displays at the show of completed quilts in a sort of competition/exhibition.  One was all full-sized quilts (with a theme of patriotism or military or Canadiana I’m not sure exactly…) and I’ll admit that I wasn’t especially inspired by them, so I didn’t take any photos.  The other was more of an art-inspired, textile exhibition.  I found some of them really nice, and took a few photos.

Leaves

Leaves

Leaves

Like the Sunflower quilt that Carola showed us – this one was most likely made by discharge (bleach).  I think that the artist/quilter started off by custom-dying the background fabric in the gradation from green to yellow to orange to rust, and then used a stamp or something to bleach out a few leaves “falling” down to the ground.

Notable is that the leaves do vary in size, but the largest leaves are near the bottom while the smaller ones are towards the top.  This gives the impression of distance.  The boldest quilting seems to be a wind blowing down, while the background filler quilting is geometric.

This quilt is called “Blown into my yard III” and is by Margie Davidson from Edmonton, Alberta.

She writes ” Having grown up in Ontario the memory of vivid red and orange maple leaves is a part of me. Maple leaves are my favorite leaves to sunprint with when I am painting fabric. But a maple tree is rare here in Alberta where I have lived for half my life. I seek them out.  My neighbor has one. The next closest, a silver maple is 20 blocks away. I am always delighted when the maple leaves from that neighbor’s tree are blown into my yard.”

(I suppose that means that rather than discharge, this is a sunprint?)

Crows

Crows

The next quilt is called Crows and Crabapples and is by Emilie Belak from Grand Forks, BC.

She writes “A crabapple tree in front of the dining room provides beauty and entertainment year round. the crows occupy a linden tree by the compost bin watching for the daily scraps. Combining these two seemed like fun. Crows are definitely not unique to British Columbia and you might have multitudes of your own. Let my crows span the distance gap from west to east and bring you smiles and cheer.” 

Crows

I like the imagery of the crows, and the bright pops of red along with the dark brown branches and dark birds is very bold against the varied blues of the background.  I really like the background itself too – it looks so subtle from a distance, but up close you can see that it is loads of little rectangles all lined up and appliqued (fused) and stitched down to the background to create one layer of quilting on top of which the applique is added.

Shoreline

Lakeside

The next quilt I really like, but can’t even imagine reproducing in any way – it is called “Kanaka Creek Sunset” and it is by Vivian Kapusta from Maple Ridge in BC.

She writes “Kanaka Creek is named for the Hawaiians who worked across the Fraser River at Fort Langley.  The pilings were used at the turn of the century to tie up log booms by the Abernathy and Lougheed Railway & Logging Co. The Kanaka Park is one of my favorite walks along the banks of the Fraser.”

With the lighting in the room I wasn’t able to get as good of a shot of this as I would have liked to really represent what it looked like.  Basically it seemed as though the quilt was as much a quilt as it was painting with thread.  The sunset in particular was really well done (and really blown out in the photo so you can’t really see it at all… ) with all of the yellow threads coming from the ‘sun’ in the centre.

Looking at the details- it also looked like the fabric was more dyed and painted than pieced, which was kind of cool, and an interesting way to reproduce the image.

Milky Way

The final quilt that I really liked and took a photo of (there were many more quilts than just this, but only a few that I really liked) is called Too Far Away by Pat Findlay from Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The exhibition was put on by the Fiber Art Network of Western Canada, and represented artists/quilters from Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Yukon and the Northwest Territories.

Milky Way

About Too Far Away, Pat writes “…In this piece I have focused on the most obvious image in the night sky – the Milky Way – and one image that is seen in the same way throughout the world.  I have futhur tried to include many generations of man, by including the oldest religious symbol know – the triple spiral, which has been adopted and used by many belief systems in our history.” 

The triple spiral is used in the background quilting of the piece, and in addition to beading the piece extensively (I would suggest that the beading is creating the “art” of the piece much more so than the quilting…)  the artist also used silver paint to expand the “milky way’ around from just the beads.

The eye is really drawn to the one very large glass piece which is not a bead I suppose – as it is sort of couched onto the quilt with silver threads, and framed in small white beads (possibly hiding the base of the silver threads?) Some of the larger white circles might also be buttons instead of beads, since they seem to be flat.  This is actually something that I think would be a lot of fun to try to reproduce.  It sure would be fun to collect all of the beads!

Milky Way

Shopping at Creative Stitches

So earlier I wrote about the Creative Stitches & Crafting Alive! trade show in mid/late October.  I didn’t include my shopping in that post because it was already getting pretty lengthy – so I figured that I would include some of the photos here.

Steamtrunk Craftworks

skulls

One of the first shops I stopped at was Steampunk Craftworks, from Surrey BC. Here I picked up a bunch of skull beads (to add to the collection of skull beads?).  Oddly enough, the beads at the show were $.83 for the large ones (in a set of three) and $.50 for the small ones (in a set of five).  On their website, the large ones are $.93 (in a set of seven) and $.65 for the small ones (in a set of ten). So… I guess I got a good deal?

I also got  some skull and crossbone ribbon (also a collection?) which is black with silver (and a white outline) I don’t love that the skulls go right-side-up and upside-down, but I’m sure I can find something to do with it!

Finally I also got some satin leaf ribbon in green and brown. This is the kind that is shaped and basically created by heat-cutting the shape, so you get a great shape, that doesn’t fray or need to be hemmed in any way. I saw this becoming something like a hair wreath or something.   (The photo below isn’t great – but you get the idea of what it looks like… )

leaf ribbon

Sugar Pine Quilt Company

grey flannelette

The next shop I went to was a quilt shop called The Quilt Patch where I first saw a few very simple flannelette quilt that I really liked the colours of.   (Dark blues, greens and greys with black sashing.) They had a package of the decorative fabrics (not the black for the sashing) in a multi-pack.

I made a note of the multi-pack to go back later if I didn’t find anything better in that theme – and did go back near the end of the day – but when I got there I saw a pile of greys instead, which I thought would go a lot better with the grey flannelette that I had bought the previous weekend.  But…. I’m not sure if it will.

I figure that if it doesn’t match (I haven’t actually checked yet at the point of writing this…) that maybe I could just go with the pack as it is – and then add in the black for the sashing, and perhaps a highlight/contrast/pop of colour.  I thought red would be nice, but then as I was heading to the cash register, I saw a multi-pack of plums, and although the fabric itself was wrong (quilting cottons instead of flannelette) I thought that the colour would be great.

Again, the photo isn’t fantastic, but it gives at least an idea of the colour I am thinking of, and a general idea of how they might look together.  So… now it’s just a matter of first – finding the grey flannelette that I bought up in Edmonton and see how these would work with it – and after that… seeing if I can find any plum flannelette instead!

possibly plum?

Scrapbooking shop

lantern

Lantern

For this next item, I’m not actually sure of the name of the shop I got it in – they didn’t give me a receipt or a bag, and their price sticker doesn’t have a shop name either.  I think it MIGHT have been The Paper Box – but their website is only a blog.. which doesn’t help either.

This is a tiny lantern from the Tim Holtz collection.

I’m actually a bit disappointed in this one… I don’t quite know what I thought it was in the package – but I didn’t see the electrical cord, and thought that the battery for this tiny little lantern would be like a watch battery, and that the on-off switch was hidden by the way the lantern was packaged.  (Need a better photo? Here it is on a shop site.)

Instead, it has a brown cord which runs to a double-A battery pack.  A very large and cumbersome battery pack.  Which is incredibly hard to open (it doesn’t have a latch, rather the two pieces are just shoved together, and thus need to be pried apart with a butter knife…) and worse still – the battery pack doesn’t have an off-on switch! According to this website – the light will glow for about three days if left on.

I had hoped to do something interesting with this – but with the ugly battery pack, and the annoying cord, and the lack of on-off switch, I really can’t see me using this in the way I had hoped.  So, now to either adapt my idea and plow forth anyways – or to find an entirely different use for this all together.

Bears & Bedtime

nose

The final item I picked up was just a plain teddy bear nose from Bears & Bedtime – this felt like a somewhat silly purchase, weighing in with tax at $.26, but there was nothing else there that I needed or wanted.  (I did take a look at a pattern for needle felting, but it wasn’t needed..) This is HOPEFULLY going to be used in a project I have upcoming – though I haven’t done anything else to start on the project, other than get it started in the research, planning, sketching and inspiration phases…

… and you?

If you attended the show, what did you buy? What workshops did you attend?

Texture with Textiles – Black background quilt

Black-background quilt

This is another of the examples shown in the Texture with Textiles session I attended on October 19 at the Creative Stitches show. The session was led by Carola from Carola’s Quilt Shop.

Black-base quilt

This is another wall-hanging/art quilt that the instructor showed us. The only real technique that she talked about with this was placing the top fabrics on the background to “audition” them by ironing them (no adhesives needed) because often the static or whatever will very temporarily ‘bond’ the fabrics together.

Black-base quilt

Black-base quilt

She also mentioned that she rarely hand-stitches, and all of the applique on the quilt is done by machine as is the quilting in the borders, and only the long basting stitches were done by hand.

Inspired?

Texture with Textiles – Sunflower quilt

Sunflower quilt

Another example of a quilt show off in the Texture with Textiles session at the October 19th Creative Stitches show.

Sunflower quilt

Carola showed off this sample, which was taught by one of the students in one of her shop classes back in Gibons.

Sunflower quilt

She talked about how the student/instructor had them all trace the sunflower design onto the white fabric which would be the backing fabric – simply because it is a lot easier to see the design through the white fabric than through the dark face fabric.

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Sunflower quilt

Once the sunflower was ‘drawn’ on with thread, (it must have also been sandwiched with batting as well) they took bleach pens to remove the colour from the top fabric (a dark green) and then they painted back in the yellows of the sunflower and the lighter green of the leaves.  The centre of the sunflower was painted with browns, and then heavily beaded with brown/copper/etc beads.

As an art quilt – this looks like so  much fun!

Texture with Textiles – Mosaic quilt

Mosaic-style quilt

Mosaic Quilt

I quite liked this quilt from a distance – up close there were elements I wasn’t as happy with, but they weren’t integral to the quilt design itself I think.  I think this could be fun to do in my own way… (especially if I have leftover fabrics from another project..)

Mosaic Quilt

The presenter talked about simply fusing down a line of the dark purple fabrics, and then surrounding that line with colours on either side.  She mentioned that she didn’t quitehave the colour she needed, so she ended up swapping some fabric with one of the students in the class as well to get the look she was after. I think this would be a really cool project to do that way – with a bunch of other people all bringing in fabrics in related colours to get more variety… She also chatted about how she did the quilting – using a thread colour that would not show up especially on either the background or the purple colours.

She used an orange tone which from a distance definitely didn’t show up on any of the fabrics.  However up close it was a bit more obvious where the quilting was. However, on top of the colours, she added a variegated pink/purple decorative stitch.  This isn’t the look that I like – I think that if I would make this quilt – this isn’t something that I would want to replicate. I think that this would be really cool with a cool blue background, with dark blue and coral ’tiles’…

Other than the quilting – she relied entirely on the fusible to hold the fabrics to the base fabric, again suggesting that this is not a quilt intended to be washed much – rather just a wall hanging.  I wonder if it is possible to make something similar that would hold up to repeated washing without the fabrics pulling away from the base fabric or starting to fray?

This session was taught by Carola from Carola’s Quilt shop in Gibsons, BC as part of the Texture with Textiles workshop session at the Creative stitches show.  Click the texture link for the other projects I photographed at the session and some of my comments about them.

Mosaic Quilt

Mosaic Quilt

Mosaic Quilt

Texture with Textiles

In an earlier post I mentioned the workshop I took at the Creative Stitches & Crafting Alive! show called Texture with Textiles. Since there were a lot of photos (to help me remember some of what was illustrated techniques were) I decided to make up  posts just for the session. This session was taught by Carola from Carola’s Quilt shop in Gibsons, BC, and she started the session with a landscape quilt she made from one of her classes in her shop.  She also showed off a number of other projects and talked a bit about each, and the different techniques she used to make them.

Landscape quilt – background and elements

Landscape quilt

It’s not a great photo – but basically there are six layers to the landscape – with a large yellow sun and a tree over the sun – and then a stream of leaves blowing off the tree and across the landscape.  The sky is heavily beaded, and other parts of the quilt are also embellished a great deal.

Landscape quilt

The instructor had a really great technique to make the curved seams of the landscape. Basically with the curves, you would have to baste the curve seam allowance, press under the seam allowance, remove the basting stitch, and then top-stitch/applique the fabric down. The instructor’s method was sort of the same steps – just getting twice as much done at once!

1. First, get two fabrics (they don’t even have to be the ones that will be side-by-side) and put them right-sides-together, sewing a gentle curving line at least 1/4″ away from one edge.  Use wash-away thread in the bobbin for this (that part is really important…).
2. Trim the seam allowance to 1/4″ inch.
3. Press the seam using a completely dry iron.
4. Turn the fabrics right-side-out (so it’s a two-sided thing with one straight edge and one curved edge.
5. Press the seam using a dry iron.
6. THEN.. once the seam is pressed, press again with a steam iron – this will dissolve the wash-away thread.  The result – two fabrics with their curves pressed under in one step!

Landscape quilt leaf

Across the sky (coming from the sun, under the branches of the tree, and into the sky) was an orange silk ribbon swirl, which on the sky was beaded and sequined (though it wasn’t on the sun area).

Leaves

The three-dimensional leaf – the centre “vein” sewn about half to 2/3 up. The leaves on the tree were made double-sided by fusing two different leaf-coloured fabrics together.  The edges weren’t sewn at all- so this isn’t a technique to use with something that will be washed. She illustrated how she made the leaves as well, making them three-dimensional by stitching a seam down the centre of the leaf, but not all the way.  This way the leaves could lay flat, curl, fold, etc…  She also talked about using a very fine polyester thread (rather than monofilament nylon thread) as  (nearly) ‘invisible’ thread to attach the leaves and for other elements intended to not be seen.

Landscape quilt – leaves and silk cocoon

Also on the tree and other areas of the quilt (like where leaves had ‘piled up’ were silk cocoons. I saw these at the last show I was at from a few of the vendors, but this time around I didn’t see any.  (Mind you, I also wasn’t specifically looking for them.) You can see a little bit here how the leaf edges have already started to fray just a tiny bit. Also here, the silk cocoon has a little silk-cocoon cap on it. It’s kind of cute, but not really my personal style.  Some of the silk cocoons have beads coming off them like a little tassel.

Landscape quilt – chain of leaves

Landscape quilt – stitched leaf

Landscape quilt – three dimensional leaves on the background.

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Tree and bark

Landscape quilt – tree and bark (with lots of moss)

Carola showed that she used the chenille method for making the ‘bark’ on the tree. With the curved branches, some of the ‘bark’ is on the bias, while other parts are straight – so different parts of the tree are fraying more than others.

Landscape quilt – chenille example

Here is an example of how the chenille is created – click the image for a larger version of the photo.

Basically you layer a number of fabrics and then slice through the top ones, exposing the colours of the fabrics underneath.  In this case there is a patterned fabric on the bottom, then a red, then a yellow, a light green and finally the top fabric – a darker green.

In the example of the bark on the tree, she used an orange fabric at the bottom by the looks of things (I don’t actually remember from the example in person) then a medium brown, and finally a dark brown as the top fabric. At the beginning of her project she intended the tree to be a cedar tree (more below about that) but then the tree was adapted to be something a bit different.

The fabric frays when you cut it – though you can also use a nail brush or something else that irritates the fibers to accelerate the fraying.  Cutting the fabrics on the bias will lead to less fraying, while more fraying will occur if the fabrics are on the straight of grain.

Moss

Landscape quilt

The moss in the tree was originally intended to be the branches of a cedar tree – but Carola said that it was just taking too long and she switched up her plan (largely due to impatience).  Instead what she had worked on for the boughs became moss for the tree.  These were made by first tracing a real cedar ‘leaf’, and then tracing that onto water-soluble stabilizer.

From there she used a quilting-weight thread to trace the design (doubling-up the stabilizer) with thread two, three, and four times. The example to the right shows the leaf stitched onto stabilizer, and then when the stabilizer is washed away, what the result looks like.

Other projects

Other projects that Carola showed off included a mosaic-tile type of quilt which was pretty cute, a black-based quilt with lots of rectangles, a sunflower quilt (taught by one of her students) and a few others.  I’ve written the posts, but they won’t be posted up for a few days – so stay tuned!  (If you try to click the links before I post them.. they won’t work – you’ll just have to come back!)

Creative Stitches trade show

The other day I went to the Creative Stitches & Crafting Alive! trade show – a show I have gone to for a number of years (apart from last year, when they didn’t have one) and it was a bit of a ‘mixed bag’ kind of event – there were a lot of good things going on, but also a lot of things that could have been done better I think.

Advertising

First off, I didn’t see ANY advertising for the show in advance.  A few days before the show my mother heard about it just once on the radio – which is a little too short notice for someone to adjust any weekend plans.  Luckily I have a bunch of time to use up at work, so I took the Friday off to go to the show (That was another strange thing, it was a Friday/Saturday show rather than Sat/Sun.) to still be able to keep my weekend plans intact.

I chatted with two people at the show as well, and they both had the same experience – one only heard about it ONCE on the radio, and the other never heard about it at all out in the community – she only knew about it from her friend who was an exhibitor. The show wasn’t here last year, so it seems like a strange thing not to have lots of advertising.

Classes

I often litter the calendar of workshops/classes with highlights and circles – there are usually so many things I want to see and do that I barely have enough time to shop as well.  This time around there were very few “must-sees”.  I started out with Texture with Textiles with the owner of Carola’s Quilt Shop, then attended Wool with one of the staff from The Quilt Patch (the list said it was Jeanne Large and Shelley Wicks -but it was only one person, and I can’t remember her name!), and then I went to the main stage demonstration by Linda MacPhee from the MacPhee Workshop called Make it this Christmas.

I chatted with mum and she complained that the workshops she dropped into seem to be mostly ‘selling’ things rather than actually offering tips, ideas, inspiration or instruction.  I agree, but I understand that this kind of scenario is an effective selling tool – but the best ones mix up the “… and you can find this at my booth….” comments with useful ideas and inspiration.  Some do it better than others.

Landscape quilt

Texture with Textiles

This session was mostly a show-and-tell of projects that the instructor had (recently?) done in classes at her shop, starting off with a wall-hanging landscape quilt, then a number of other projects – mostly art/wall-hanging quilts. I don’t really think that techniques were anything I didn’t already know – but there may have been a few things that she applied in one way where I would have used another method – and hers was easier/more textural/etc.

I ended up taking a bunch of photos throughout the session, and rather than post them all here, I figured that I would make up a separate post to illustrate some of the techniques she showed (coming soon..). In order to remember things I liked, I ended up taking a number of photos.

Wools

Based on the description of this workshop I had expected something very different from this session than what it actually was.

“Have you often looked at wool, though you might like to incorporate it into a project, but are just not sure exactly how to use it? Join us to learn about felting wool, hand dyed wool, recycled wool and much more..”

I had not expected for the session to be entirely about wool applique for quilting projects for starters, and I was a bit bothered that the instructor kept referring to “felting” when I believe that she meant “fulling”.  I also wasn’t sure that some of her information was accurate, or more likely, that her information was complete.  I ended up leaving the session early because I felt that the information she was giving was less than what I already know about working with wool, and I’m not specifically looking to do wool applique anyways.

Make it this Christmas

This was the session that I was most interested in attending – it was listed as “quick and easy ideas” to make things as holiday gifts this year.  Since I’ll be hosting a holiday crafting session, and am still looking for ideas – I thought that this would be a good source of inspiration.  Unfortunately, although most of the suggestions would certainly be quick and easy – I didn’t think a lot of them were the kind of things I’d want to give away as gifts.  She showed items (for which she was selling the patterns, fabric, and accessories for) like:

• tie-front tops (I can’t say I know anyone who wears a tie-front top right now)
• fringe-top fleece toque (I would have worn it at 15 years old, but I don’t know if 15 year-olds today would wear it)
• ruffle-trimmed rectangle of fleece (worn as a shawl/wrap)
• cut-fringe slinky ‘boa’ (which might be ok for a child’s dress-up)
• faux-fur shrug (even on the TINY woman modeling – this made her look like a wooly sheep…)
• faux-fur trimmed shrug (this was actually nice)
• cocoon coat (I liked this too – it was a square, folded in half. The sides were stitched up with a hole to create arm-holes, and the centre of the front was slashed to create the front opening.  The center slash was trimmed in faux fur.  It actually wasn’t a coat – more like a shrug, but making it longer and wider would work to make it more of a coat.  It actually might look really nice with that cut-work purple knit I have…)
• two jean jackets made from old jeans (really dated)
• sherpa/fleece mitts and slippers (kind of cute, but super-simple)
• a length of faux fur cut to about 5″ wide with the full width of the fabric as the length called a scarf (ok as a costume, but cheap as a gift)
• two tubes of fabric called scarves (One of these was made of the ruffle fabric – the kind generally used for rumba panties.  Linda used the full width of the fabric, cut about 18″ wide and sewed it into a tube, wore it double-looped. The other fabric was a very light-weight crinkle polyester, cut one meter wide and used the full width of the fabric to do the same – sewn into a tube and doubled looped.  Like the scarf above, I might do something like this for myself, but I wouldn’t call it a gift.)

There were other things that she showed off as well, but I don’t remember them.

So, while I had been hoping to come up with some great inspiration for gifts or for this upcoming gift-making craft day… I’m afraid I didn’t.

The exhibitors

So, with any trade show, the big point is to shop as much as anything else. I didn’t end up shopping as much as I have in the past – partially because I haven’t been sewing as much right now so I am not running low on a lot (in the past I stocked up on tracing paper which is hard to find – or at least the kind I like is hard to find – but I have lots right now and don’t need any more). I found a few things though – which I’ll document later…

I was glad to see some of the shops I like there again like the Sugar Pine Quilt Company (from Canmore) and A Great Notion (from Abbotsford), but I was disappointed that a few different shops weren’t there like Gala Fabrics (from Victoria, BC) or a shop that used to sell lots of Victorian-style brass stampings, lace, and other things (whose name I have forgotten).

Scrapbooking

While of course I was at the show for the sewing element – there were a LOT of scrapbooking vendors as well, and a good amount of space devoted to scrapbooking workshops and sessions.  I find this kind of awkward, because even though I like scrapbooking, I have no idea how people are using this space.  Is it a drop-in space? Do you bring your photos and materials from home and work with all of the tools? Do you buy a kit from one of the vendors and just do a layout (and then how do you know which of your photos will work with that layout? (I know that when I do a complicated layout, it is inspired by the photo, not the other way around…)

At the last few of these shows I have felt as though the scrapbooking is taking over the physical space, and this year was no different.  It felt as though there were fewer vendors than before, and the balance between quilting, sewing general crafting and scrapbooking was weighing very heavily on scrapbooking – though there were fewer scrapbooking vendors this year too I thought. There was only one vendor (that I noticed) that was selling primarily fashion fabrics.  The rest were all quilting shops (that were selling fabrics).

Conclusion

Overall I was happy to have gone to the show, though glad I only went for one day instead of two. I was mildly disappointed overall with the workshops, the variety of vendors, and the selection of things for sale (I hardly bought anything compared to previous years). Did you go to this year’s show? What did you think?

Fabric shopping in Maui

Yep, Maui!  As I write this (this is a scheduled post, so it won’t go up until after I get back.. privacy, youknow?) I’m sitting in a hotel room in Maui, Hawaii, and got back today from a shopping trip to Kahului where I visited three different fabric stores, and thought that I’d share my experiences, along with the fabrics I’ll be bringing back home to Calgary to add to the stash.

Sew Special

Fabric from Sew Special

My first stop was Sew Special, located in the Kaahumanu Center.  This is inside a lovely open-air mall, and it’s a regular retail-sized store.  (Rather than one of the big fabric stores that I’ve visited elsewhere.)  It’s very clean and well-organized, with reasonably good space between the aisles.  It’s largely a quilting shop, with patterns, quilting fabrics, some notions, and a small section of dress fabrics in the back.  I found the quilting kits really attractive (especially the sashiko quilting pattern + fabric kits) but on the expensive side.  (The one I was looking at was a beautiful sea turtle, wall hanging, but it was $63.00 so it stayed on the shelf…).  The staff were really friendly and helpful (especially showing us lots of owl-print fabrics when I commented on a few cute ones near the cutting table), but not pushy in any way.

Finished quilted panel from Sew Special (shot with my iPhone). Click for larger photo

However, I did pick up a few OTHER fabrics at Sew Special – a lovely koi fish print on a teal background (it also came on a black background) ($11.99/yard I think) and three panels (also $11.99/panel I think) one a geisha, one cranes, and the third a tidal wave and a koi. They had the last one made up, which I snapped with my iPhone.  I think that if I hadn’t seen it made up, I might not have picked it up.

One of the fabrics I was looking for was a Hawaiian print for a dress.  They did have some (I think priced at $5.99/yard) but very limited selection, and nothing that really appealed to me.

After going to the Kaahumanu Centre, we headed down the same street to the Maui Mall area – where we thought we’d find Fabric Mart – however after having no luck we popped into a shop and found out that they had moved from the location I had found online… Since I had originally looked up shops last year when we were first planning this trip – I had out-of-date information.  So, we headed to the Kanaha Pond Waterfowl Refuge, and then from there to the Discount Fabric Warehouse on the Hana Highway.

Discount Fabric Warehouse

Fabric from Discount Fabric Warehouse

Finding the Discount Fabric Warehouse was the first challenge, since I hadn’t marked our map with the location before leaving the hotel (and my laptop with GoogleMaps…) and we found TOO many buildings that didn’t have address numbers on them.  Or- at least not very visibly.  Also, although the address makes it sound like the building faces the highway, it doesn’t – so we needed a few passes before figuring out where it was.

Upon entry, there was a very friendly shop clerk, but later on when I was shopping, I found the staff less helpful than I really wanted.  I liked the turtle print above – but only found it in orange.  I asked if they had any other colours, and was told that I would need to look through what they had for it.  Their selection of Hawaiian print fabrics wasn’t extensive – but they were all very well displayed and easy to look at.  Most clerks at fabric stores I’m accustomed to have at least some idea of the fabrics they have if they have it in multiple colours, so I didn’t think it was a strange request… but eventually I found mustard yellow, brown, and then finally the green above.  I was really looking for a navy blue, plum, red, or black – something more in my colour scheme, but I couldn’t find any.  The Hawaiian fabric was between $4.99 and $5.99 per yard.

I also picked up a panel of the Mt. Fuji print which I have the sneaking suspicion that I might already have, since I saw it a while back and really liked it….  I also saw a number of Asian prints, mostly priced at $5.99/yard) including some different sushi prints that I really liked.  There was the sushi print with the names above on blue and red, plus the sushi meal print directly below in red, blue, and this grey/black, and the one below it (sushi without names) in black and red.

I ended picking up 4 yards of the one on the very bottom… kind of thinking of the Steampunk In Tokyo costume idea… though I haven’t really fleshed out yet what that will be…

Fabric from Discount Fabric Warehouse

Discount Fabric Warehouse has a fairly large selection of fabric, but at least half are cottons or poly-cotton blends. (So very quilting-friendly.)  There were a lot of dress and costume fabrics as well, but not a lot of colour ways.  The prices were generally slightly better than Sew Special, though there were a few items that I liked, but found a bit too expensive to pick up.  (A nice devore satin for starters…) They also had a few gorgeous colours of spandex velvet ($15.99/yard) which I toyed with… but I’d want at least 4 yards, and that would start getting really heavy and bulky to pack to come home again.  (I only packed my suitcase 2/3 full on the flight here though!)   Although most of the fabrics seemed to be priced just slightly better than Sew Special – I did find some of the same fabric I’d bought earlier – and instead of $11.99/yard, it was $13.99/yard – so ‘discount’ might not be entirely accurate!  It appears from their website that Discount Fabric Warehouse is a chain on several of the islands.  The shop also had a small pattern section and a small notions section too.

Fabric Mart

Fabric from Fabric Mart

Finally, as we were heading out of town, we saw Fabric Mart on the road heading out of town! Such good luck!  This is a shop crammed full of fabric – much of which is in the window (ak! sunshine = sun bleaching!) and much of it on shelves completely out of sight and relatively inaccessible.  There is a HUGE selection of Hawaiian prints – think of a colour, and they’ll have it.  Think of a (typical) motif – they’ll have it! (Mind you, I didn’t see any of the turtle print I had picked up just a few blocks earlier – but Fabric Mart is so stuffed, it’s entirely possible that I just couldn’t see it under all of the others. The Hawaiian print fabrics were also the best price I’ve seen so far – $2.99-$4.99/yard – with plenty of selection at the lower price.

There’s also a decent quilting fabric section – though equally difficult to browse through, and then a fairly decent fashion fabric section including taffeta, sheers, laces, PVC/vinyl, fun fur, and swimsuit knits.  I really liked some of the glitter PVCs (what fun!) but I don’t think it will wear as well as I would want it to for what I have in mind.  I think it was $14.99 (but don’t quote me on that..).  There was also a small notion section which I found kind of difficult to look through unfortunately, but I really wasn’t looking for anything in particular, and there was nothing special there that I wouldn’t find at home anyways.

Wal-mart

Last time we were in Hawaii (on the big island) I ended up actually picking up some fabric from Wal-Mart (they still have a cut fabric section…).  They had lots of cotton poly prints but also lots of rayons, and I found a few things there I liked.  This time in Maui the Wal-Mart seemed to have 3x the number of bolts of fabric, also the poly-cotton and rayon Hawaiian prints – but unfortunately nothing really appealed to me.  The prices were good – but I don’t remember the exact prices – I think most of the poly-cotton was in the $5.49/yard range, though I could be mistaken.

 Maui Quilt Shop

On a different day we also headed into Kihei, Maui, and hit the Maui Quilt Shop.  It certainly is a classic Quilt Shop – very small, and packed tight with lots of ideas, samples, fabrics, and patterns.  I found it a little too tight actually, and know that I missed some things that were hidden under other things.  Also, because it was so tight, having just a few other shoppers in there made it very crowded and difficult to get at things.  I really wanted to get a little bit of a beautiful turtle print – but skipped it just because it seemed like such a hassle.

Another disappointment, I could have sworn that I had seen their kits on their website for a very good price, but when I looked back at the website before going – those prices had been removed.  Once there, I found that the prices were not as good as I had hoped – the same Sashiko kit that I had considered at Sew Special for $63.00 was $70.00 at the Maui Quilt Shop; which was just too dear for me to justify.  I did however, pick up a cute little turtle pattern and fabric kit (for $10.xx and $30.xx respectively) but it was only after I had left that I realized why the pattern looked so familiar.  It’s made by a Calgary company! I could have easily picked it up here I’m sure… but oh well!  Sorry no photos – maybe once I have it made up!