Sewing Show and Goodies!

i had a seriously awesome weekend. so good. it was full of yummy fabrics, shopping, favourite people, awesome inspiration, and did i mention the shopping?


Cynthia's already blogged about it (cause she's way more organized than i am) but i'm going to post as well, mostly because i want to show off all the goodies i got!


Friday and Saturday were the Creative Stitches Show in abbotsford, and the very generous organizers gave the Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild a booth for the event! yay!

Cynthia, Lysa and Sherri (who obviously needs a blog) did an awesome job setting up the booth, and we changed it up through out the show as well. we took turns doing shifts at the booth, and brought some of our own quilts to put up during our shifts. that's why the following picture looks a little heavy with quilts that i've made!





when i wasn't doing a shift at the booth, i hung out with awesome people, and did lots of shopping. i also spent an hour or so hanging out outside with Kalin, with was sooo nice. it was so lovely outside, we were in shirt sleeves. i have faith that summer will eventually come! i also had the opportunity to take some photos in the sun, so hopefully i'll get around to blogging them soon.


speaking of shopping, look what i got!





a lot more than i'd planned! lots of fabric, obviously! i picked up fat quarters at several booths, including Gala Fabrics, some charm packs, and gave in to the temptation of fabric by the pound from Quilt Essentials twice! i was actually pretty good with the fabric by the pound the first time, but the second time was the end of the day Saturday, when it was fill a bag for $10... how could i resist that?! i also picked up thread, ribbons, needles, brightly coloured trim, the book Zakka Style by Rashida Coleman-Hale, which i've totally been eyeing, and a subscription renewal for Quilter's Connection too.





Barb tempted me with A Stitch in Color charm pack that she bought, and i had to go find one for myself. while i was at the Hamel's Fabric booth, i saw that they also had Pezzy Prints charm packs, so i snatched those up as well. i was going to order them online, but this way i got to support local(ish) and not pay shipping! yay! i also picked up the folded fat quarters above at Hamels, halloween fabrics and some geometric prints.





i have no idea what i'm going to do with these, but i couldn't resist them. i picked them up from the SteamTrunk booth, but they also sell them in their etsy shop if you want some too! in a random the world is so small twist, i met Cathy several years ago when she was the super friendly and helpful clerk at a scrapbooking store i bought mixed media supplies at. it was super fun to run into her again!





Titanium needles. have you tried them? i've heard about them, but i've never had a chance to test them. Kalin picked these up for me from Cindy's ThreadWorks while i was doing one of my shifts, so i didn't actually get a chance to check out their booth, but i'll be checking out their website soon. i also found some thicker needles for quilting or embroidering with perle cotton from A Threaded Needle. Susan was awesome and recommended these needles, which were cheaper than the ones i'd picked out myself, because she knew i wanted them for #8 size perle cotton. i also nabbed her last copy of Zakka Style, yay!

and more Aurifil! gosh, i love this thread. i picked it up from Carola's, two spools of 50wt, and one of 12wt. i haven't worked with the 12wt before, but i'm looking forward to it. i was overwhelmed with colour options, and trying to stay on budget, so i only let myself buy thread that i needed for specific projects. of course, it helped that i can pick up more 50wt when i need it from The Quilted Bear!



in addition to the booth, we also did a meetup and swap between VMQG and FVMQG members on saturday afternoon. the swap was part of a challenge for VMQG, which you can read about here (and see a peak at a few mini-quilts that i haven't gotten around to blogging yet!) the challenge and swap were to create an improv based mugrug. i missed out on taking pictures of them all together, but Cynthia's post has pics of almost all of them. we gave people the option to send their swap items with me or Cynthia if they weren't able to make the meetup, so some people did that, but we also had a bunch brought the day of. it was super interesting to see how different people interpreted improv, and how some folks pushed the limits further than the others.

the meetup aspect of it didn't go quite as well as well as the swap, but that's okay. there was a bit of a mix up with the room that we were in, and some folks were more interested in shopping than show and tell, but next year we'll just bar the door and force them to stay, and i'm sure it'll go better. ;)


i had two mugrugs to swap and i'd planned to give my partner a choice, but the numbers were a bit off, so i ended up with two awesome mugrugs from FVMQG members. i received the amazing CIRCLE mug rug "Olive Juice" from Lysa, and the super springy pretty mug rug from Edi. Lysa blogged about hers here, you should go check it out!





in addition to the mugrugs, Cynthia totally surprised me and spoiled me with fabric! i'd mentioned looking for fishnet themed fabric for a project i did last month, and she brought me fat quarters of the two fishnet fabrics that are in her Roller Derby fabric line! that was so super sweet of her, and now i have to find the PERFECT project to use them in!


and what else do you see in that picture? yes, that is my name tag, which i was wearing in the booth, but see what's on it?

BUTTONS!!!





okay, so one of them's a keychain. that just makes it even better, actually.

Lysa and Cynthia schemed up lots of fun things for our booth, and one of them was buttons to give away. and they were awesome! they made up three designs, one with the guild logo, one that says I <3 Modern Quilting, and ONE THAT QUOTES ME. ohmygoodness. it's slightly embarrassing, but i love it so much that i don't really care. ha! it's so awesome. apparently they were a big hit, and they pretty much all disappeared the first day, but i also don't know how many they made of each design (my oh-so-canadian attempt at being humble. however, they're now threatening to make another design with a different quote from me on it, so that kind of undoes the humility, doesn't it?)

(i almost wore that shirt to the show on friday, but i never actually got around to stitching the letters down, and i'm scared to wear it until i do! i have no faith in fusible web.)