CHSI Trade Show and the lovely Kreinik Stand

A few weeks ago I was at the CHSI Trade Show looking for new products to review in Workshop on the Web.

I had a chance to hand over my 3 pieces to Kreinik and then ended up going back and talking to Doug and Dena for a lot of the time I was there.  They are such lovely people and have the most wonderful threads.  I love sewing with them, and for anyone liking a bit of glitz in their work, these threads are perfect.

Here is Dena standing in front of some of the amazing threads on display.

I could have spent hours looking at all the colours and varieties of thread.  Oh yes, I did!!!

Here is a picture of Dena and myself.  It took Dena and Doug about 36 hours to get to the UK because of all the terrible weather that the USA was experiencing in mid-February, but I am so glad they made it.  I picked up a few things there which I will be reviewing in a bit more detail in the Product Reviews of Workshop on the Web, but here are some sneaky peeks!

I loved this Flash in a Tube.  Made for fly-fishing, it serves a much more useful purpose for the textile enthusiast!  A review for this is coming in WOWs June issue.

These non-stick patches are fabulous.  They are cut to a perfect size for a Clover iron.  A lot of irons nowadays are Teflon coated, but not the Clover irons, so although you can get into small spaces with it, the metal surface can get sticky and coated with fusibles.  This prevents all that.  I'm going to put mine on just as soon as I have cleaned off all the muck from the last 10 years...

On some of the other stands, I picked up some Melt-It Powder from WOW Embossing Powders.  There were amazing things being done with this powder by Tania Ahmed, and I'll be having a go myself in the forthcoming WOW.  I also watched a demo by Lisa Pavelka on her new product Magic-Glos, a new UV-cured resin product.  It is applied directly, without the mixing that IceResin needs, so I will be looking out for that product.

Kreinik pieces - finished!

I have been feverishly sewing for the past few weeks and in anticipation of the Stitches Trade Show, I have finished my work inspired by and executed using wonderful Kreinik threads.

I used mainly Fine Braids for this piece.  It is a piece of silk paper using Oliver Twists silk tops, then a mask sprayed with off-white acrylic paint and then some hand stitching in the leaves.  I used Very Fine Braid col 018, for the running stitch, Medium Braid 015L (Bright Green), Very Fine Braid (Bright Blue) 014HL, Fine Braid 3223 (very pale lilac), Very Fine Braid 3214 (icy blue), Very Fine Braid 3506(another bright blue), Fine Braid 032 (white iridescent) for the leaves.  I outlined the piece in Micro Ice Chenille 12 (bright green) and Medium Braid (same as the leaves).  I machine stitched around the leaves, but it was mainly hand stitched.

This piece was mainly machine stitched using various gold Fine Twist (ZT0003 White Gold, ZT0033 Yellow and ZT0004 Gold) and Fashion Twist ZS1152 Jade threads.  The feathers were stitched in gold as well.  The background was made up of thermofaxed feathers and feather stamps.  I free machined feathers onto the background randomly.  I just made the stitching up as I went along.

This piece was my favourite.  I screen printed the design, using a freezer paper stencil.  I then machine stitched the blocks of colour and hand stitched in the leaves.  I used Fine Twist in 2T0041 Royal Blue, 2T0044 Lilac, ZS1153 Plum for the purple background, and Fine Twist ZS1137 Snow.  Snow was great as it was white thread with a fine silver thread running through so it sparkles like the snow!!

The threads were fantastic to work with, particularly the Fine and Fashion Twist machine threads.