Sewing For Pleasure 2011

Sewing For Pleasure



Abakhan's Stall

 Despite a rather nasty case of tonsillitus I made it to Sewing For Pleasure on the Saturday - an epic 9 hours travelling to spend 7 hours at the show!  Now that's dedication for you.  I am glad I made it though, it was lovely to see some of the people I chat to on Facebook and Twitter and to meet them in person, plus the lovely ladies from the Liverpool Sewing Club even took me for a drink after.

I popped over to see the lovely Steph and Amanda on the Sewing World stand and negotiated a second year of sponsorship with them as well as a lovely giveaway coming up...  I then went to see another site sponsor Abakhan Fabrics but as you can see from the photo their stall was heaving so I had to go back to them at the end of the day when it had died down a bit!



Afghanistan Inspiration



I helped out on the Rainbow Disks stall for a while where I met the talented Helen M Stevens who was demonstrating techniques from her new book One Simple Stitch.  She had her own stall at the show too which had been so popular she was losing her voice by the end of Saturday (I lost mine by the time I got home too).  Whilst manning the stall I noticed that Creative Fabric Techniques by Annette Morgan was proving very popular, well worth a look.



Janome Stand

 It was great to see that the Afghanistan Inspiration were there again.  I wrote about this fabulous project last year when I met them.  You can read the article here.  I made my way over to the teaming Janome stand where they were demonstrating a range of their machines and I got to meet Heidi Lawton who I interviewed for the site a couple of months ago but had not yet met.

Unfortunetly, I did not get chance to look at all of the exhibitions on display but I enjoyed the Undoing of the Corset exhibition and was amazed by the Above & Below the Waves Knitting Project, it was breath taking! 

The Undoing of The Corset

Above & Below The Waves



Sara Radford's Stall

 I managed to find time to visit a few of my customers who were exhibiting at the show, including having a lovely gossip with sewing tutor Sara Radford. Her stall looked absolutely stunning and was attracting a lot of interest.

Work by Jan Messent

Talking of gossip I bumped into the new editor of Sew Hip Wendy Gardiner, she has just taken the role and I'm sure will let us know more about her plans for the future of the magazine once she has had chance to settle in.  There was an amazing display of items made for one of my favourite books Celtic, Viking and Anglo-Saxon Embroidery by Jan Messent.

I also had the fortune to meet textile artist Dionne Swift, who specialises in Devore.  She said she would love to write an article for the site in the future to tell us all more about this technique.  I rounded the day off with a visit to the Prima stall to subscribe for me, my mum and my sister and came away with 3 huge bags of goodies worth over £40 each, and the subscriptions only cost £20 a year too - bargain.  It's just such a shame their stall was hidden away in a corner of Hobbycrafts where no one could find them, but i'm glad I took to time to track them down!  All in all a productive day and worth all the travelling, and the lack of voice for days after!