<Living Crafts Blog

I just came back from the CHA Conference and want to give you a brief tour of what I liked. This is a craft trade show, and includes paper products, sewing, knitting, crochet, fine arts, etc. I enjoy mostly meeting with people at yarn companies, book publishers, and discovering new products.

C & T Publishing has a new award winning product that caught my eyes: Transfer Artist Paper. You can use your inkjet printer to print anything you want on this paper, and then iron it onto fabric. I’ve never been fond of this kind of thing in the past because you end up with an image which feels like plastic, and no matter how beautiful or natural and soft your fabric is, the image part has a cold, synthetic feel to it. With this product, I noticed the t-shirt still stays soft and nice, so it is definitely worth a try. I have requested that they send me a piece so I can try it myself. C & T has even come up with a book on how you can use this method for many different projects. It is called Create with Transfer Artist Paper, by Lesley Riley. Here’s the photo of the product next to the printed t-shirt (please note, the shiny crown and wand are stitched on top of the t-shirt after the image is printed):

I also saw a nice new book coming soon by Stash Books, an imprint of C & T, called Countdown Calendars. They had displayed it nicely next to one of the projects in the book, so I snapped these photos for you before the book is available for sale.

This crocheted flower trim was a great find, made with cotton, by Petaloo. They also had little packages of just the flowers in different size and colors. This line was probably the only natural line they had among hundreds of products, but it is a great item to use for many things!

I had a lot of fun looking at these felt projects at the EK Success Brands booth from their Dimensions Needle Crafts line:

Here at the Lion Brands Yarn booth, Vanna White is being interviewed by FavCrafts.

but I find myself more interested in this love seat

here’s a photo of the front

and here’s the matching cube chair – never mind the yarn mummy sitting on it

Here at Patons Yarn booth I am smitten by this crocheted pillow

And by these Sugar & Cream crocheted dolls – the girl in Kimono is my favorite.

Here are some crocheted sachets with herbs inside. What a great idea for shoes.

I found a creative example of how you can use your millions of miles of finger-knitted and cording your children make. It can even be felted after assembling together like this.

Love the pom poms.

Vickie Howell’s yarn manufactured by South West Trading Company – she was showing it to retailers and I got a photo of her but it didn’t turn out good. The photo didn’t do justice to her pretty self, so I deleted it. But here are some of the pieces she’s made with her yarn:

And here’s the sample photo:

And I found some nice photos of her at the event here.

And here’s some silk yarn I discovered from May Arts.

Artemis is the only silk ribbon brand I knew of, which is hand-painted and was reviewed in Living Crafts Good Finds section in the last issue, but I also like these silk solids in different widthss from May Arts.

Part II coming to a blog post near you very soon. Most exciting part in it is that I found paper to make lanterns with!

Pardis