Craft Club has been running on Friday mornings now since September and it’s a really important bit of what we do here at The Making House. When I set up I wanted to create a place that could be a hub for developing a creative community, offering a variety of workshops and exhibitions to inspire people to get making or develop what they do.

Craft club is about sharing ideas and skills; various regulars have brought along ideas and skills to share. To name but a few: Julia Unwin brought along bottle top pin cushions and some cute Canadian inspired snowmen, Linda Stacey taught the group some advanced crochet as well as crochet for beginners for the likes of me, Karen Carr showed the group how to do toothbrush weaving, Emma Hodges brought in her spinning wheels for people to have a go on, Emma Whittaker always turned up with a new amazing crochet pattern and idea, Anthea Chambers gave us some ideas for creating and using Dorset Buttons, I shared some of the bag weaving skills I learned from Sarah Parker, creating birds and hearts from plastic bags, we did extreme pompoming with Rhea Clements, fathomed out how to do origami boxes for the lovely truffles we made for Xmas

We do a monthly tutorial, this year it’s often delivered by myself or Joelle Harris our sewing expert, but I think we’ll be bringing in a few more experts for next year.

With me we did some wet felting creating basic felts and mobile phone/glasses cases. Excited by ‘The Metal Age’ project I was doing I taught the group some pewter casting and then impressed metal working techniques.

Joelle showed us ways of upcycling ties in to purses and brooches and also crocheting with wire to create jewellery.

And in between there has been much needle felting, crochet, knitting and chatting done! There’s always plenty of tea and cake, though I may have to learn to do some baking over summer if you want it homemade.

Craft club is on Friday mornings from 10.30am until 1pm. It’s an opportunity for crafters to meet, bring along work, share ideas and chat. Price £5, with that you get as much tea and coffee as you’d like, cake and once a month we do a tutored session. Tutored Sessions are £5 to regular craft clubbers, normal full price £20

We’re now on a summer break throughout August but we’ll be starting again with a tutorial by Joelle on 6th September on how to upcycle a shirt.

For more details check out our courses page http://themakinghouse.bigcartel.com/product/creative-craft-jewellery-sewing-club