Last week passed by in a bit of a blur at Alexandra Palace. It was the annual Knitting and Stitching show which is a huge gathering of all things textile related spread over a massive 5 days and the whole of Alexandra Palace. I was there with a stand for MIY Collection and taught 3 sell out workshops.
I always find the run up to the show a bit fraught and full of worrying about the design of my stand, organising stock to take and planning my workshops (not to mention making sure everything will continue to run smoothly at MIY Workshop and the MIY Collection online shop while I’m away)!
However, once I’m there and everything’s set up I do enjoy it. Here’s a flavour of the show:
Here’s my stand this year and even if I do say so myself I think it was my best yet!
Yours truly in action on the stand. Who knows what I’m saying but I seem to have them hanging on my every word!
It’s a great opportunity to meet dressmakers from around the country and talk to them about my patterns and book, lots of whom follow me online so it’s doubly lovely to be able to meet them in person.
I was really lucky this year to have some help on the stand for a few of the days from Rebecca Eaton of Rebecca Jane who is going to be doing some bag-making workshops at MIY Workshop and the always lovely and smiley Emma of Dressmaker’s Social who was an absolute star and helped me out for the busiest 2 days on Friday and Saturday. She also drove us to the launch of The Foldline at Sew Over It in Islington; a super bit of sewing networking crammed into 90 mins. If you haven’t checked out The Foldline yet, have a look; founders Kate and Rachel have worked really hard on launching it and they’re promising it will become the Facebook for the sewing community. Let’s hope so as the sewing community has been lagging behind the knitting community on this.
Thanks to the very witty (see badges above….!) Emma of Dressmaker’s Social, I was also able to take some time away from my stand to go and chat to people who I’m normally only able to chat to online, this time I caught up with Grace of Beyond Measure UK (beautiful tools and accessories for makers), Amy aka Almond Rock Sews and editor of Love Sewing magazine, Pam and Simon of Ernest Wright & Son (the best scissors traditionally made in Sheffield), Tina of Tina Francis Tapestry (tapestry kits and patterns), Jules of Sew Me Something (sewing patterns, fabrics, yarns), Wendy Dolan with her super new machine embroidery book, Kim Thittichai on the Vilene stand, Elizabeth Betts editor of Popular Patchwork, Carolyn Clark professional long arm quilter, and Sara Cook who was doing her first spot of teaching at the show.
I also met Sophia the flamingo on the Toft Alpaca stand and wanted to take her home with me!
Excitingly I launched a few new products at this year’s show, some of which are now available from the MIY Collection online shop, but more on that in one of my next posts.
I’m also going to post some of the teaching I did at the show as online tutorials: A Complete Guide to Sewing with Knits (a collection of all my tutorials and guides to sewing stretch knit fabrics) and How to Make Continuous Strip Bias Binding. Watch this space.
Wendy Ward 