Testamonials

Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival, Fall 2003: Toronto

Threads' reconnaissance team reports on seven newly released items destined to make your sewing easier and more creative

by David Page Coffin

Threads recently returned from hosting a booth at the 16th Annual Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival in Toronto, Canada, which we've been attending for more than a decade. This year's show attendance of 40,000 was on-par with the huge draw of the past several years, despite the sharp fall-off in tourism to Toronto earlier in the year, due to threats from SARS.

As usual, our booth was constantly jammed with eager enjoyers of the many sample garments we brought from recent issues, Taunton's complete fiber-arts book catalog, and of course, the free sample magazines and bright-red Threads-emblazoned shopping bags, which dominated the view of the show floor (and the surrounding city streets) on all four days, and were hotly sought by all, especially after the day's stock was exhausted!

While this show is unique among those we attend in having many booths and demonstrators in nonsewing-related crafts, we did spot some truly interesting new products for the sewer. Check out seven of our favorites. And to find out more about next year's Festivals, visit www.csnf.com.

The Sewing Emporium (www.sewingemporium.com) was showing the VelVet "V" presser foot, designed to make sewing on velvet and other high-nap fabrics trouble-free. The foot is available in configurations for all machines.

Jonny Seww offered ink-jet printable iron-on stabilizer, a freezer-paper-style stabilizer ideal for paper-piecing, stenciling, topstitching, quilting, and embroidering, using designs created on a computer and printed on the paper, distributed by MacPhee Workshop (www.macpheeworkshop.com).



Pfaff (www.pfaff.com) showed a mind-boggling 10-thread serger, the Creative 4874, featuring many decorative and unique utility seams, including three types of cover-stitch, and the abilty to make belt loops in a single pass.



Autodigitizing (www.autodigitizing.com) demonstrated a remarkable software package capable of instantly converting any graphic or photo into color-coded, ready-to-stitch, editable embroidery designs.



The Sewing Workshop (www.sewingworkshop.com) offered two new patterns, the Peony and Poppy Vests (two asymmetrical designs), and the Won Ton Blouse (a V-necked, waist-length top with wide, cut-on sleeves).



Wild Ginger (www.wildginger.com) debuted their PatternMaster Boutique version 3 software, which includes the capacity to import and position graphics onto any pattern pieces, ideal for pre-visualizing embroidery designs (left), and Wild Things!, their fully functional free program for drafting and printing patterns for hats, bags, wraps, and footwear (right).



	The EuroSteam iron can blast out steam while the soleplate remains cool.

Finally, we were impressed by a new iron, just released (in Canada only, but hopefully soon to be available in the States as well): The EuroSteam iron, with an in-iron water boiler that creates steam separately from the element that heats the soleplate. No bigger (but much sturdier) than a typical household iron, the EuroSteam creates consistent blasts of steam regardless of soleplate temperature, and never spits, since the water is always fully heated. No contact info yet, but we're keeping an eye on this one, and will keep you posted!