Tuesday, 15 February 2011

Creative Stitches and HobbleCrafts Show

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Thought I’d do a bit of a post about the Creative Stitches & Hobblecrafts Hobbycrafts show that visited Brighton Centre this weekend.

I read a really funny post here about how the average age of those attending was about 80, so I thought I’d add my thoughts to the pot. 
Now, please don’t get me wrong: I love little old ladies.  I fully intend on being one quite soon.  

What I can’t cope with is flocks of them, all shuffling very slowly into a bottleneck of indecisive inactivity.  I have the same loss of patience in supermarkets (when I’m not helpfully reaching for stuff on the top shelves) and on busy pavements where I often find myself trapped, at the height of Christmas shopping meltdown, by their stealth-like pincer formations.

But I digress.

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About 50% of the stands were devoted to papercraft and scrapbooking, and a lot of it really ghastly.  Sorry.  I like paper more than the next (wo)man, but some of this was super tacky.





But, there were some lovely sights along the way, like these giant knitting needles (they had some glorious shawls and rugs on display) beautiful hand dyed wool (but oh so expensive!) and some creative bundles of Fat Quarters.

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There was also this glorious glitter stand - I wanted to scoop up handfuls and throw it into the air, like fairy dust, but they were only selling it in tiny little packets for £1 a pop.  I resisted.  


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The high spot was the exhibition area - there were some great examples of embroidery and some quilting here.  


The first section was a “Glimpses From the Sixties” competition
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This was absolutely superb!


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the petit point stitches were no bigger than a couple of mms!

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Liz Taylor in Cleopatra!


There was this lovely piece too:

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  the detail was simply beautiful!
Beer Today Gone Tomorrow by Maggie Danks


and some really fab dyeing and stitching:


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Daisy Chain by Jenny Rolfe


My favourite part was a little mini exhibition of corsetry 
- check out that bunting!  Knickers!?  Genius!


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self portrait with corset made from bras!


So, all in all a fun few hours, but ultimately I don’t think I’d go again unless I needed something like a new ruler … (more of that another day!)

 The problem wasn’t the little old lady brigade at all.  It was the lack of any evidence that ‘modern quilting’ exists in the UK, either on the selling or exhibiting side of things.

The lady at the Quilter’s Guild stand admitted that she had no idea that there was a quilting community on this here interweb.  I was aghast.  She asked me if I wanted to write an article about it for them, but then informed me I’d have to stump up the £37 annual membership first.  No thanks, not just now …

But my ultimate high spot of the day ??

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Oh yes!  Impossible to find here in Brighton - and now I’m on an applique melt down … Yay!

I am so so happy to be a part of a wonderful online community - thank you for stopping by and taking the time to leave me comments and support along the way.*  

It means so much more now I know just how difficult it is to find this on my own doorstep!

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*Talking of which … make sure you pop over here to Flutter Kat’s and stay in touch with this great week of posts … there’s some great stuff being discussed …

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