Sew Expo happens once a year in Puyallup, Washington. If you’re a crafter in the Puget Sound area, this is the place to be. I have been going annually over the last few years and I feel like my personal experience gets better and better as the years go by.
My next door neighbor, Nancy Cornwell, introduced me to Expo (as it’s fondly called) 10 years ago. Dubbed as the “Polar Princess”, she wrote several books on sewing with fleece. When Nancy learned that I was interested in sewing, she gave me complimentary tickets to come to the show where she was teaching seminars. I went… and I got hooked… that changed my life forever. (You can still get Nancy’s books in Amazon but she retired from the business and has been focusing on golf and traveling these days!)
Three years ago, I bought fabric… and my Brother VM5100 Dream Creator machine from Paul La Ponte of Quality Sewing. This made me venture into quilting and rekindled my love for sewing. I sewed every day that year and made 10 quilts!
Two years ago, I bought fabric (again)… and the Hatch digitizing software and digitizing lessons from John Deer of Ultimatestash.com. That summer, Embroiderrific.com was born. We opened EmbroiderrificNW on Etsy in the fall.
Last year, I bought fabric (of course!) and advanced digitizing lessons from John Deer and a few pairs of Kai scissors from kaiscissors.com.
This year’s discovery (aside from the beautiful fabric that shows landscapes of Venice, Rome, & the Stonehenge which I got from Feather Your Nest Quilt Store) is Tsukineko inks from Joyce Teng of TSC Designs. I’ve been looking for ideas to expand my embroidery business. Fabric art is an area that I want to study/focus on this year.
Can you believe that this started as a plain white fabric? 
This design was made using a combination of templates. 
With Joyce Teng of TSC Designs
Along with a couple of my friends, I attended Joyce’ class called “Enchantment with Fabric and Tsukineko Ink”. We were all amazed to see how she transformed a plain fabric into these beautiful masterpieces. The fact that she uses common household items such as Barbasol shaving cream, isopropyl alcohol, aloe vera gel, and SoftScrub to make magic with these all-purpose inks made her my hero. With that small $4 bottle of ink, you can transform 300 yards of plain white (or black) fabric into something special!
I can’t wait to get started experimenting with Tsukineko inks. I have a ton of projects in mind and I’ll be writing about my adventures in the next few months.
There are a couple other stories I want to share about today… but for now, I need to sleep. My sugar high from finishing that Bull Chip Cookie is coming down.
Embroiderrific 