I spent a couple of days this week at Sew Expo in Puyallup, Washington.  This is a really BIG show with lots of vendors about everything sewing.  A wonderful place to see all the new products up close and personal.  Many of the sewing and quilting big names come and are in their company’s booths, autographing their books and demonstrating techniques.

All the sewing machine manufacturers come and bring their newest machines.  You can get a demonstration or sit down and sew on the machines, take a “make it and take it” class using the machines, or just get all your questions answered about specific issues you may have with your own machine.  I always go each year with a shopping list and a list of questions I want answered about whatever I am having trouble with at the moment.

I see that Koala has redesigned their cabinets to accomodate the newer wider sewing machines.  The new machines fit in last year’s cabinet, but there wasn’t enough leg room underneath.  When you sit lined up in front of the needle of your machine, your left knee can run into the cabinet structure.  I am only sorry I bought my cabinet last year before they made the change!  I was planning to go complain (politely) about this deficiency, but they have already corrected it.  It’s not a fatal flaw, but with my long legs I would have appreciated the extra room.

I will add a couple of posts later showing what I learned in a couple of classes I took, but here are a few items that I found interesting.

First, using a lightweight fusible interfacing to assemble a quilt.  This has been used for watercolor quilts (where the quilt is made from a lot of small squares) in the past but would also work well for simple quilts made from squares or rectangles.  You can even buy the interfacing with a grid already marked on it.  Just lay the squares or rectangles down on the grid, fuse them lightly in place, and then fold and sew on the lines.  This year a company from Montana – Crooked Nickel quilts – at http://www.crookednickel.com – showed their variation on this technique using sashing and cornerstones.  It looks like a superfast way to make a table runner or quilt.  Here is a photo from their booth showing several table runners in various stages of construction on the table, and a completed one hanging on the wall behind.  They sell these as patterns or kits on their website.  Another one of their features is Tee Shirt quilts, again using a fusible interfacing to back up the shirts.  You need an applique pressing sheet so you won’t get your iron all sticky, but otherwise this looks really simple:

I was pleased to see one of our local quilters, Barb Schultz, with her  Enchanted Valley Arts company booth at the show.  Check out her business at  http://www.enchantedvalleyarts.com/ . She was super excited about her first time being in Sew Expo and it was great to see her there:

I took one of the “one needle” classes – about 45 minutes long – from Karla Alexander.  Karla has terrific techniques for amazing quick quilts.  She has just published her ninth book, “Stack, Shuffle, and Slide” and it looks terrific. If I wasn’t in the middle of developing a landscape quilt class and about a dozen other things I would have bought it.  Here is a link to buy the book at Amazon:  Stack, Shuffle, and Slide: A New Technique for Stack the Deck Quilts  .  I particularly liked her great technique for creating one of those quilts that look woven,  Check out her website for photos:  http://www.saginawstreetquilts.com .

Here was another cool idea that would be fun for a kid’s quilt. Not a new idea but still fun.  My apologies to the company, I didn’t note the name of the booth:

More from my other classes at the show in the next post: doodle art, and using Tsukineko inks to paint fabrics in really cool ways.