Last week, I gave a lecture to Quilters by the Bay in University Place. One of the guild members kindly hosted me for the night and since I was over half way from home to Puyallup, I decided to go to the Sew Expo. This is a huge biannual event held at the State Fairgrounds and lasting for four days. There were two enormous halls of vendors, many of whom traveled from out-of-State to be there to cater for every need of sewers and quilters.Judging by the numbers of people busy shopping, quilting and sewing are alive and well as hobbies and there were serious spenders making the most of having all these vendors in one place. Many of large quilt shops in our area had booths. Here’s a sampling. As you can see, it wasn’t just quilting supplies. There were sewing machines, yarn and more. It was fun to check out new sewing gadgets.

There were colorful displays of quilts, plenty of fabric and sewing machines large and small.

The lady at the machine in the QuiltWorks Northwest booth was demonstrating Grip and Stitch, two dish-sponge sized discs that are used to move a quilt around as you machine quilt. They sit on the surface of the quilt and you can gently put your hands on them as you quilt. They cling to the quilt, so that you don’t have to grip with your hands as you machine quilt. I had a go and it worked pretty well.

This t-shirt amused me – “I have OQD – Obsessive Quilting Disorder Thank goodness there’s no cure!”