Review: Brisbane Stitches & Craft Show

The Brisbane Stitches and Craft Show was on last week for four days and I was lucky enough to have some tickets. On Sunday, Mum and I left the kids to play with CraftyDaddy and Grandad for the day and headed off to enjoy the show. It was so worth it!

Remember how I wrote about 5 top reasons to go to the show? And gave away some tickets? Well, I was right about all of those reasons, but I discovered some more as well.

1. I met a magical lady for the first time.

Way back in September last year I reviewed a fabulous children’s book about a magical quilt. It was written by Katie Sokolic and I was excited to find she was at the Show! She was just as lovely in person as I had imagined from her emails, and her Dad, who drew all the lovely illustrations for the book, was there too. How fun it was to meet them both! Go check out her book here.

2. I ran into a teacher I had not seen for years.

It turns out that the fabulous Prudence Mapstone, well-known for her amazing yarn projects, is married to the guy who taught me Year 8 Manual Arts a long time ago. It was very cool to get to chat to him and fill him in on where my brothers and I are now. He told me all about his wife’s teaching and how much he enjoys travelling with her to shows and on cruises. Read more about Prudence and see her gorgeous freeform yarn projects here.

3. I enjoyed seeing the beautiful quilts from the Brisbane Modern Quilt Guild and watching that close-knit group of ladies enjoy sharing their work with others.

You can see two of these quilts that I snapped photos for Instagram on the day. I wish I had snapped a couple more! There was a very cool fox quilt but it had so many admirers that I couldn’t get a clear shot! This group meets regularly in Brisbane and you could tell what a nice bunch they were just by seeing them interact with each other for a few minutes If I lived in Brisbane I would definitely have taken up their invitation to visit! Find out more about them here.

4. I saw some new products that I want to buy one day so I have filed away the information to follow up.

I knew that Horn made cabinets to store sewing machines, but they also had a cutting table that was pretty special. The height was adjustable so you could stand at it instead of sitting. There was a cut out section to sit a sewing machine into with a shelf to lower it and a clear cover . You could also use the clear cover to create a light box by slipping a lamp underneath it! It was super clever. Now to find some room in my house… You can check it out here.

I also saw some clever storage solutions called Best Craft Organiser Cabinets which are stocked by Arnold’s Scrapbook and Craft Supplies. These cabinets are designed to store scrapbook paper in flat drawers, and all kinds of another crafty bits and pieces in a variety of sizes of drawers and boxes. They looked very clever! Check them out here.

I wonder if we’re about to see a revival in spinning and weaving so I was interested to see some lovely wooden looms being demonstrated.  You can see the a picture of one of them above. Unfortunately I didn’t grab any information from these ladies as they were pretty busy but I’ll follow-up in the next couple of weeks with some research I think.

Finally below you can see a sample of another new product I saw called Powertex. This is a paste product that can be used to stiffen fabric and create textured art pieces. It comes in lots of colours and I thought it looked like it would be fun! Check it out here.

5. Most importantly, I was inspired to try some new projects! 

I picked up a couple of sashiko stitching kits, a beautiful stitching genre that I have seen before and always wanted to try. Look out for more information on that tomorrow. Edit: Read more here.

I also bought two items to get me back into quilting. I have perhaps 4 quilt tops waiting to be quilted but I’ve been reluctant to take them out knowing that it can be physically hard work to manoeuvre a quilt under the sewing machine and that last year’s shoulder injury would not make it any easier. But I came across a quilter I already trust named Pauline showing a product I had not seen that should help. Again I’ll tell you all about that in another post so look out for more info! (If you want a sneak peek at the lovely Pauline’s website, check it out here.)

Oh, and possibly the most fun moment of the whole day? Giving away my two spare tickets to a couple of random ladies who were about to buy their tickets at the ticket office! They were so excited to get a freebie and it was so nice to see one pair of ladies immediately share the second ticket with another pair of ladies nearby so that all four of them paid half price. I hope you enjoyed the day, ladies!

Disclosure: I was gifted tickets to the Show when I gave away tickets a couple of weeks ago. This post was not required or sponsored in any way. I just wanted to share my day with you!