A week or so ago I attended the Stitching, Sewing and Hobbycraft show at Manchester. Ian’s mum and friend run a craft group at their church and got free tickets but asked if I wanted to join! Clearly I did!! It was held at Manchester Event City near the Trafford Centre.

 
It was basically a collection of stall which sold items for crafting and a few stalls where you can try things out. Kinda of like play expo but for crafts.

 
It was a magical world full of everything you’ve ever dreamed of if you like to craft! From paper to pens, materials to wool and absolutely everything in between.

 
It was incredibly busy and the initial rush of people was quite intimidating. But everyone was pleasant and the stall holders were lovely.

 
We had our first run round together picking up the essentials. A trip to the £1 stall was quite exciting! But we were on the hunt for some specific pieces for the wedding coming up! Luckily we got everything we needed/wanted. And we then ate our packed lunches. Hot food was sold at the canteen area but the queues were very long and there was a £5 card limit.

 
I then went around exploring on my own adventure. I first stopped a stall where a lady was felting, wet felting. I watched her for quite a while and then began asking a few questions and just generally chatting to her. Felting has always been something that intrigued me and I’ve always wanted to give it a go but I’ve been told it complicated and difficult but my sources were in my opinion mislead. It seemed straight forward to me. Lay some felt on a bamboo mat, wet it, soap it and roll.

 

This is from a beautiful piece called oxygen by  Annette Frassler-Trost.

I then met another lady on a different stall doing some dry felting which again looked so simple but still created beautiful patterns and art. I again chatting with her for a while. They were both so helpful and demonstrated specific things I was interested in as well. I’m definitely going to give Felting a go this year!

 

This istaken from a piece by Sabine  Drager-Gebhardt called Spring of Live.

Ian’s mother loves her cross stitch and we saw a lot of beautiful patterns while we were looking around. I even picked up two very simple and small patterns to try myself!! She picked up some more complex patterns as well and I secretly hope maybe one is coming my way?!

 
It was great day out and a lovely opportunity to bond with people of similar minds. It was very exhausting though and a very spend heavy day so we did enjoy puttin our feet up and eating a curry when we got home!!

TC

xoxo