Nantes textile show

 I enjoyed a pleasant city break in Nantes, France, this week - for my long-planned visit to the Pour L'Amour du Fil textile craft show.  Nantes turned out to be a very pleasant, low-key city; very walkable, lots of green spaces and waterways, a huge chateau, many interesting shops (including fabric shops and knitting shops) and the people were polite and friendly (which may sound like an odd thing to say, but I still remember the disdain for English tourists encountered in Calais and Paris back in the 80s and 90s).  Not much English was spoken, but I was amazed to find French vocabulary from my school days materialising from the dim recesses of my brain.  I thought I had forgotten most of my French, or at least replaced it with Japanese, but things were coming out of my mouth that I didn't even know I still remembered.  Perhaps it was being immersed in the language and hearing it all around me. Although I did say 'yes' in Japanese several times by accident before hastily changing to 'oui'.

The show itself was good, about 125 stands plus around 20 small exhibition spaces.  It was quite crowded on the first morning, and the line to get in was immensely long but only took about 30 minutes to get through.  Inside the show was equally crowded, with women 2 or 3 deep at the popular stands, but my experience over many years of politely worming to the front of crowded dollshouse show stands stood me in good stead. I was pleased to almost immediately come across Mother's Dream, all the way from Tokyo - they must have to sell a lot of kits to recoup their airfare!  I bought another one of their applique bag kits. My impression is that it's a great show for quilters, probably more than half the stands were quilting related, plus several dressmaking stands (of patterns, or fabric, or childrens patterns etc) and also several bagmaking stands (supplies, patterns, kits).  The next biggest category would be embroidery, but probably only a half-dozen were for cross-stitch.  Then several crochet stands (heavy emphasis on amigarumi), some knitting stands, an antique textile dealer, someone demonstrating bobbin lace, and a few gapfillers like two stands selling dressy silk scarves or snoods, and a few others selling textile related jewellery.  It was quite enjoyable to see so many new-to-me traders, and an aesthetic different from what I see at the Festival of Quilts.  I had bought a ticket for two-day entry, but after three hours I felt I had visited all the stands that interested me, and as I wasn't doing any workshops, I didn't feel the need to return.

The exhibition spaces weren't huge but showcased some really lovely work, with a wide range of styles - from Amish quilts from a private collection, embroidery on quilts, textile art, to modern bojagi.  I took more photos than this but I won't fill the blog up with them.

Shopping haul: I loved the vintage cross-stitch designs of Des Histoires de Broder, but actually ended up purchasing a pattern book and the cutest buttons from Atelier Bonheur du jour.

I loved this sample of theirs, so with the pattern book and buttons I should hopefully be able to make something similar.

I didn't buy much fabric, but loved this pack of fat eighths of Japanese fabric from a Boro stall, and a pack of fat quarters that looked vintage French style to me but actually came from a shop in Barcelona.  I picked up the two ribbons, the sewing book and the magnet at shops in Nantes city centre.

These cute pins for decorating pincushions were from the show.

This is my Japanese bag kit, plus some cute continuous zip and some nice colours of cotton webbing from the show.

The vintage spool is from the show, but the vintage ribbon and adorable lace baby cap are from an antique shop in Nantes.

These junk journal-style notebooks are from a stationery shop in Nantes.

I took a cross-stitch project with me to work on in the evenings, the next house in my Houses of Britain SAL.  At home I have been stitching on the little house from CrossStitcher magazine.

Before I left, I sewed the hems of my woven tablerunner and it's on the table now.  The fabric did not full very much, probably due to the nylon content in the sock yarn.  It looks nice, with the different pattern areas adding interest.  I'm enjoying the weaving but am starting to feel like you only need so many towels, coasters, mats and table runners, lol.

I got in a bit of 3D printing before I went.  Makerworld, the free file site, has tons of free designs for craft tools.  I printed one of these cloth tape measure roll-up devices and it turned out so well that I immediately printed another.  They tidy the tape and turn them into retractable tapes instead of just a tangled mess. I also printed a clever folding zipper pull jig to help with putting zip pulls onto continuous zipper tape.  Still really enjoying using my printed workstation for cross stitch, which keeps everything to hand - no more playing 'hunt the scissors'. DH has been printing various model soldier files although he's still not satisfied with the quality - some of them are fine but not to the standard of purchased models.  That's more to do with the designs and the nature of printing in a filament printer, than to do with the printer itself.