Today was the only day I could wander around CHA, also known as the Craft and Hobby Association show. It’s usually held in Anaheim, CA, which can be a bit of a trek from Los Angeles, where I’m located. As luck would have it this year’s show was held in Los Angeles. Yea ha!! Just 15 minutes from my store and house. Lucky me!! S I walked the aisles searching for items I can use for fusing and mosaic and metal clay and I found a few things. I do need to go through my catalogs and brochures and business cards to find everything there is to write about. I do want to mention the bottle cutter at the Diamond Tech booth. It makes glass bottle cutting more precise and a whole lot safer. They also sell a wide variety of mosaic supplies as well as stuff for fusing, glass bead making and stained glass. They are going to require multiple postings to talk about all they do. And they’re the perfect place for the beginner. They even have microwave kilns…
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Designer Spotlight: Terezy Stitch
Terezy Stitch is a Polish Esty shop with a bit of a witchy vibe where you’ll find cross stitch patterns on all sorts of subjects, with an emphasis on flowers, landscapes, cats and holiday patterns.
It’s not necessarily representative of all the projects you’ll find there (though there are other insects done in the same style), but as soon as I saw this pattern for a golden dragonfly I knew it was the one I needed to share. This one is 176 by 174 stitches, which comes out to 12.6 by 12.4 inches, or 31.9 by 31.6 cm on 14 count fabric.
It uses 15 colors, and I love it on the black fabric but it would be pretty on any shade of blue as well.
The biggest category in the shop is floral cross stitch, and here you’ll find realistic looking designs of flowers, succulents and mushrooms as well as more graphic or abstract approaches. I love this window of succulents!
There are also a lot of landscape cross stitch patterns, heavy on mountains and water but also things like a lavender field with a windmill and a fantasy castle on a cliff side.
The Christmas patterns include a lot of houses, and there are lots of cute cat cross stitch patterns, from cartoonish to geometric to folk art styles.
This store also includes a good number of blackwork designs, which is not something you see everywhere. Most of them are bookmarks, and a lot of those are zodiac sign bookmarks, but that’s a great way to try out blackwork on a small scale and see if you like it before buying a bigger pattern. (Blackwork for the most part is done with back stitching, but it’s considered a form of cross stitch because it’s worked on cross stitch fabric.)
Check out everything this shop has to offer at Terezy Stitch on Etsy. If you see something you like, I’d love to hear about it!
[Photo: Terezy Stitch]