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.

Gelli Plates

I was sorting through the work I produced doing demos at the Crafts4Crafters Show in Exeter back in January.  Some of the best ones went into the Product Review section in the March issue of Workshop on the Web, but there were a few more that didn't make it.

This Gelli Plate print was made using a homemade stamp (more about that later) and acrylic paint onto black cotton sateen.  I pressed the stamp into the Gelli Plate before printing.

 This was done by using a Catalyst Wedge to make marks in the plate before printing.  The Wedge was W-04.  Art Van Go supply these wedges and they are great for mark-making on the Gelli plate because they are made of silicone and shouldn't damage your Gelli surface, as long as you aren't too heavy-handed.

This was done using a feather stamp pressed into the Gelli plate.  The fabric used had already been printed (the blue colour is Pebeo Studio acrylic, an interference colour which is fabulous with the Gelli).

I like this one because it's such a bright colour.  This was made using another Catalyst Wedge.  W-03.

This is made using the homemade stamp again and the Pronty A4 Leaves mask stencil.  The colours came together really well.  Again, the Pebeo studio blue was used.

Another Catalyst wedge print.  The feather mask is also in there.

Going back to the home-made stamps.  I went on an Angie Hughes Velvet course, and she showed us how to make our own stamps.  It really opened up our imaginations for creating interesting and bold designs.   Angie then did an article on this subject for Workshop on the Web  December 2013 issue, which is a brilliant article.  We took this article to the Crafts4Crafters show as well to demonstrate how the articles can teach you skills that you can then take further.   Here are the stamps I created:

I did make some leaf skeleton stamps and plain fatter stamps to frame those.  The feather I used to print onto the Gelli plate (further above) is also made in this way.

The Show was fabulous.  All the people there were very friendly.  We met some great exhibitors, including Farno Designs, who had some fantastic hand-dyed fabrics which I used Decolourant on with various stencils.