My visit to Picture This Plus in Abilene, Kansas

Judy Starkey, Debbie Wolf, Sue Wild, Patty Hurwitz (who is the designer of Moonflower Designs, please check out her designs!) , Julie Alderson, and myself all met up at Picture This Plus in Abilene, Kansas. All of us ohhed and ahhed the models on the walls, there was plenty of oh that is beautiful to I would have never dreamed of doing it on that material but it is very pretty!
I found a pattern that I just simply fell in love with as soon as I saw it. It is "La Clef" or "The Key" by Nimue designs. Here is the link to a photo of it http://www.abcstitch.com/optioncart/image.php?id=679892&ret=http://www.abcstitch.com/designers_php/designers.php?page=1&category=Nimue&all=yes?page=1&category=Nimue&all=yes
Then we gravitated over to ..................................................the table holding the overdyed fabric!
Marilyn is such a gracious lady, she explained where to find the aida fabric, the linen fabric and then it came to my favorite fabric, the evenweave. Talk about indecision!!!!!!!!
I felt like a kid in a candy store....................which one do I pick??????????????
I really like the Aurora fabric but with being bombarded with all the beautiful fabric I could not think of one pattern at home that I could do it on this Aurora fabric. I am wanting to do the Needleprint Mary Wigham sampler, and I thought Earthen would do great on it, but they did not have a big enough piece to do her on and I did not want to order it, I wanted fabric to take home with me!
Marilyn asked us for an opinion, boy was she brave LOL! She wanted to know which of the four different color fabric we thought would look best on Lizzie Kate Christmas by the Letter. There were 4 of us at that time and each of us picked a different color, I liked the Carnival fabric, I can't remember the names of the other three, but one was yellow, one was a lite blue with looks like clouds, the other one was another blue. She left it there for when others came they could choose their favorite and the last I heard , yellow got the most votes.
I was also trying to think of the new Mirabilia Mediterranean mermaid that is coming out. I have almost 5 of the mermaids done by Mirabilia and I have used every fabric that PTPlus has that looks like the ocean, or water. I looked on the internet and it calls for Star Sapphire and I think Lagoon or Fathom would look good on it, but in the end I think I am going to wait and do a floss toss on it.
After looking at the models, the fabric, we decided to have a show and tell. Judy's husband works for the police dept and she had specially designed a sampler that would represent his chosen profession and it was beautiful. She also had finished a pattern that was handed out at the last Heart's Desire retreat last April, she did it in three different purples I believe they were the Vicki Clayton silks. Sue Wild went next and she had taken all the Prairie Schooler Santas that come out once a year I think I saw a 1984 Santa on the afghan that she has cross stitched the designs on, it was so beautiful! It was a brillant way to use all those patterns. I have mine in a bag waiting for me to do something with them. For her mother's birthday she had done 4 designs of Little house needleworks patterns and made them into a box with her mother's initials on the top and buttons on the bottom of the box which made a nice touch to the box. Very creative Sue!
Julie brought the same pattern that Judy did from the retreat but she did it in a political flair for a friend of hers. It was the same pattern but they both looked different. I brought my Mermaid of the Deep Blue Sea, Queen Mermaid, Mermaid of Atlantis and Enchanted Mermaid, everyone liked all of them.
Marilyn gave us a tour of what goes in to making those beautiful overdyed fabrics. It is a interesting process what she has to do. She also showed us where the larger pieces of fabric is held and I picked out a 1/2 yd of Voodoo. I plan to do Mirabilia Lady of the Mist on it.
We broke for lunch, we decided since it had been raining outside, we would go upstairs to the deli and order something for lunch. I ordered the Roast Beef sandwich and it was delicious!
After lunch, we went back to the fabrics and helped each other choose fabric, we looked at the patterns again, looked at the enormous selection of overdyed floss, from Vicki Clayton silks to Weeks Dye Works, Sampler Threads, Needleworx.
I left at 1:30 for my dear brother was so nice to drive me up to Abilene in the pouring rain, and I thought 3 1/2 hrs of killing time so I can have a good time In the next post, will be some pics of my visit to Picture This Plus.