Scenes from the Sewing and Stitchery Expo

It was a whirlwind trip! I'm still recovering from the red-eye flight I took home, but I wanted to share some of my favorite pictures from the Sewing and Stitchery Expo. I will be back with a more detailed post on my experience and thoughts; this is just a teaser!

One of the first things you see is the giant bull head, pictured above. (That's a bull, right? I'm not up to date on my farmyard animals.)

Inside, the vendors, runway, and classrooms! Here's the Palmer/Pletsch book display.

Nancy's Sewing Basket was a great booth. They had Vintage Vogue 1019 made up in some cocoa-brown sparkly suiting.

I had to come home with some of the embroidered velvet you see on the left here; it was a necessity.

I attended several fashion shows. I met these gentlemen after the Simplicity show. They come together every year and always make coordinating outfits from flamingo-print fabric. They're pretty popular, as you might imagine.

I was hosted by Coats and Clark, who are celebrating their 200th anniversary! Here's Lynn Browne and Michele DeFay displaying commemorative tins they gave out. The tins are adorable and have vintage thread ad artwork on them.

Coats sponsored a charity event called the ProAm Fashion Show. 16 mentors (the "pros") were matched up with 16 local girls (the amateurs) and sewed a project to be worn in a fashion show, and ticket sales raised money for the Mary Bridge children's hospital. I was beside myself when I got to step in at the last moment to introduce one of the girls. Her name is Maya, and we were like two peas in a pod. Here she is wearing the cute floral sundress she made for the show.

It was totally the highlight of the event for me, meeting these girls who are so into sewing! They were all so sweet and enthusiastic; I loved it.

Another highlight: the scone truck. These scones are made with pure magic; that's the only explanation.

I tried out a Juki straight stitch machine. It does 1500 stitches a minute!

A vintage dress form on display. It's made from cardstock pieces, and could be mail ordered and assembled.

The book shopping was excellent. The Unicorn Books booth was carrying items from Lacis, which I found has a huge inventory of historical fashion and sewing books, like Vintage Lingerie by Jill Salen.

 Look inside! A 1950s Dior brassiere.

There are also patterns from each garment (in the sample size only) that can be blown up to be used. Fantastic for research purposes.


We passed a carwash with a rotating pink elephant sign. Of course I had to take a picture!

 More to come!