sew expo 2018 – tierneycreates

Let’s dive into a continuation of yesterday’s post, Sewing & Stitchery Expo 2018, Part I.

Overload!

I appreciate the comments and as one commenter stated: “My brain would be on overload”. Yep, my brain was on major overload.

But at least I did not get this overloaded:

Yes the paramedic arrived for a crafter who had passed out at Sew Expo and hit her head. She was okay and I am not sure if they had to take her out on the stretcher or no (I did not want to “rubberneck” around the scene (another attendee filled me in as I walked by).

Buttons, So Many Buttons

Here is a sampling of the numerous booths of buttons. I did not linger in these booths too long as I have enough buttons in my life right (even if the booths had “life-changingly-beautiful” buttons 🙂

Need a Sewing Machine?

There were so many domestic sewing machine vendors: Bernina, Pfaff, Brother, Janome, Baby Lock, etc. There are also many long-arm machine vendors. They all had “show specials” and were willing to spend as much time as you needed to convince you to buy one of their machines!

There were also sewing machine cabinet/sew room organization vendors; of course my dream Bernina machines.

Yes most of the photos above have to do with my fantasy/dream Bernina sewing machines! As I am a “Berninaphile”, I spent time wandering around these booths. (If you ever win the lottery and want to get me something nice as you have really enjoyed my blog, I have a couple $10,000 + priced Berninas in mind!)

I even bought some awesome Bernina fabric at one of the Bernina booths:

I do not know what I am going to make with it (I bought 2 yards of it) but it was one of those “I have to have it” moments 🙂

Serious Cuteness

Most of the vendors had beautiful and well thought out displays, but a couple really caught my attention:

Craft your own wool stitched treats (very low calories, ha!):

This vendor made a covering for her booth so you entered a quilted house:

Nothing to wear? Turn a quilt into a dress:

A sampling of some of the cool quilts on display in vendor’s booths:

The medallion one makes me think of Melanie @Catbird Studios!

A Touch of Home

My beloved Stitchin’ Post Quilt Shop from Sisters Oregon had a vendor booth at the show. They are there every year. I first learned about the Stitchin’ Post when I lived in Seattle, WA, had just started quilting and went to my first Sew Expo around 2000 or 2001. Little did I know a couple years later (2005) I would be moving to Central Oregon and they would become one of my favorite quilt shops!

It was fun to say hi to local people I knew working the booth and believe or not, I actually purchased a couple items at the booth (although I can shop at the Stitchin’ Post anytime back home!)

Just Some Random Photos

Here are a couple random photos that did not fit into their own header section.

Endless displays of patterns and fabric bundles:

Cool cork fabric:

Very fancy handmade seam rippers! (Taking seam ripping to the next level…)

And endless “bits and bobs” you want to add to your sewing/crafting room:

Overstimulated and Hungry

We wandered ourselves near the point of fatigue with no break for eating. Finally about 2:00 pm we had enough and found a place to eat nearby.

We could have eaten inside the convention center/fairgrounds like many crafters did:

But we seriously needed to escape Sew Expo (a new Science Fiction film idea: Escape from Sew Expo) and we ventured a couple block away to a New Orleans cuisine themed eatery and had amazing Po’ Boys sandwiches away from the maddening crowds!

Mmmmmm catfish Po’ Boy sandwich and a microbrew

Our Haul!

When we returned to my Quilting Sisters home who was hosting us this weekend, we pulled out our individual hauls of goodies and did a “show & tell”.

Here’s a photo of some of our combined group haul:

There is a lot more but we do not want a record of it – ha! (“What happens at Sew Expo, stays at Sew Expo”).

Postscript

My Quilting Sisters are a jovial group and we enjoy teasing each other.

For the rest of the evening, and the next day, we did a mini quilt retreat and each worked on small projects we brought with us. Well the hostess was working on a scrap quilt with half-square triangles and my other Quilting Sister was working on a wedding quilt with a lot of trimming.

To tease me about buying a bag of cool scraps at Sew Expo, they put together some additional scraps for me to take home:

As you can see by the ruler, unless I was going to glue a tiny quilt together, these scraps are a little too small….

Sewing & Stitchery Expo 2018, Part I

March 4, 2018October 29, 2018 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

I spent a brief (it seemed too short) 3 day trip to visit friends in Gig Harbor, WA and go to the Sewing & Stitchery Expo (“Sew Expo“) in Puyallup, WA at the Washington State Fairgrounds with some of my WA based Quilting Sisters.

I took a zillion photos and in this post I will share some of the “zillion” photos and give you a taste of what it is like to attend Sew Expo.

The Flight to SeaTac Airport

When Terry the Quilting Husband (TTQH) and Mike the Miniature Schnauzer dropped me off at our small Central Oregon airport (RDM), I thought of this old post from Sassy the Highly Miniature Schnauzer’s SchnauzerSnips blog: Human Storage?. From a dog’s point of view, as this post discusses, it appears that I am just staying at the airport for a couple of days – Mike sees me dropped off at the airport and then picked up at the airport!

Flying in small planes makes me slightly nervous. When we moved from Seattle to Central Oregon I had to acclimate to taking smaller planes. Our airport is small and cannot handle standard size planes/jets, just the Turboprop size planes, like the one in the image below:

But I discovered, years ago, thanks to my primary care doctor, the magic of a small dose of Ativan and a dose of Dramamine – it makes the flight awesome.

Alaska Airlines serves, for those 21 and over, a complimentary glass of wine or a Pacific NW Microbrew during these small plane flights between Central Oregon and Seattle. The flight is between 45 – 55 minutes and I enjoyed a blissful flight with my microbrew, a biscuit, my knitting and relaxing music on my smartphone (in airplane mode of course!):

Flying in small planes is better with a brew and biscuits!

I got quite a bit of knitting done on the scarf I mentioned in the post A Case Against Procrastination, during the trip between the flight, hanging out in the airport before flights, and hanging out visiting with my friends. I will share an update when the scarf is done (so you won’t lie awake at night wondering when I will get that scarf done – ha!)

Welcome to Washington State Fairgrounds

The Sasquatch is the unofficial mascot of the Pacific NW. I lived in Seattle for 8 years and did a lot of hiking but never saw a Sasquatch running around! But when you walk into the WA State Fairground there is a carved Sasquatch to greet you and it was decorated for Sew Expo!

Inside Sew Expo: The Crowds

There are two buildings housing vendors for Sew Expo and the space is HUGE! It took us 4 – 5 hours to walk around Sew Expo. Here are a couple photos of the crowds and some random vendors:

It’s Called “Sew Expo” But There Was a Lot of Yarn!

Sew Expo is really about most textile based crafts and there were many yarn vendors. I know many of you knit and crochet, so let me share some of the endless yarn-yumminess in the vendor booths at Sew Expo:

Special Booths: Pendleton Wool

Some vendors had special large booths, such as the large booth of Pendleton Woolen Mills. They had a large area in their booth in which they were selling Pendleton Woolen Mills selvages. I could not figure out why someone would want to buy a giant bag of these selvages until I noticed that there were shag rugs made from these selvages. Great recycling!

The Fabric, Oh The Fabric

Okay it is called “Sew Expo” and so the bulk (at least 60% or more) of the vendor booths were dedicated to fabric for sewing garment, making quilts, and other sewn crafts. Here is just a sampling of the fabric delights I browsed:

This booth had an exceptionally delicious offering of silks:

There were lot’s of fabric deals:

But the “craziest” fabric deals of all were the “trough-o-fabric” at $7.99 a pound section and the vendor selling yardage of high quality fabric at $5.99+ a yard.

Trough-o-Fabric

A ridiculous amount of quilting fabric remnants, fat quarters and yardage were thrown in giant rolling tubs. You grab a large plastic bag and fill it up with what you want, they weigh it and you pay $7.99 a pound.

Yes this looks like total insanity, and it was but I had so much fun with the other quilters digging through the troughs. We were all helping each other and looking out for whatever someone asked for help looking for. for $14.00 I picked up about $40 – $50 in high quality quilting fabric (some Kaffe Fasset stripe fabric, etc).

Fabric Roll-Land

This area was huge and took up a large section of the last aisle in one of the Pavilions at Sew Expo. One of my Quilting Sisters picked up some mind blowing fabric deals in this section but I had “Fabric Burnout” by the time I got to this section and only took photos, no serious shopping (which I regretted later when I saw the deals my friend got!)

Let’s end this post here, I will continue in the next post with the rest of the Sew Expo experience.

Postscript

Thank goodness I spent a little time proofreading this post before posting it. It was not a “Freudian Slip”, just typing too quick, but I did type “Sex Expo” instead of “Sew Expo” in several area (including at first the post title, which I expanded to the official name of the event).

Trust me, if I went to “Sex Expo”, I would not be posting about it – ha! (And that would be a very strange thing to attend with one’s Quilting Sisters!)

Feature photo credit: sewexpo.com