The H+H Americas trade show was held in Chicago this past week at the Donald E Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. This was the location of past summer ACCI/CHA shows and it was good to visit the location again even though the show was quite different.
H+H is a long established German show held annually in Cologne, which Jean (Kievlan) and I attended in 2000 and 2001 for AccuCut. We demonstrated, and I translated, how a die cut machine and dies worked to create shapes. The Cologne show was quite different and much smaller than the current HIA & ACCI shows we attended here in the US, but full of creativity.
This was H+H's second year here in the US and it was well attended with over 200 exhibitors, the majority of which were selling yarn & fabric. There was a handful of companies selling tools and a few general craft companies, but this show was definitely geared to "soft" crafts. There were companies from New Zealand, Iceland, South Africa, India, Australia, Asia and, of course, the UK. It was good to see companies from Yorkshire selling "wool" (yarn). I'm a Yorkshire lass and grew up in Bradford which was the world's center of the wool industry until wool slowly took a back seat to synthetic yarns in the 1960's. My parents and grandparents worked in the wool industry, so I was very familiar with the process.
For those of you unable to attend, I spent a day at the show simply walking the aisles and taking photos of the booths along the way. There are a lot! So grab a cuppa tea or a glass of wine, a few snacks, put your feet up and walk the H+H show with me..... Note: if you'd like more information about a specific exhibitor, look up the H+H Americas website, scroll down and you'll find the exhibitor list there, plus a couple of show highlights videos.
Photos are best viewed on your iPad, or laptop. Enjoy!
