In a timeless tale of skill against skill, there is a competition a-brewing here at the Urban Craft Center.

It’s happened to all of us. We see our friends breaking out their most impressive projects and we feel the need to show off our own skills. Occasionally bragging will ensure, and sometimes a dare or two will slip into an otherwise civil conversation. Last night when Amy brought out her new quilt project, she discovered Rhea also had a quilt project in the works. Two crafters, two projects, both at the same stage of completion. What began with a few harmless jokes ended in a challenge; a race to see who would finish their quilt first.

The odds are difficult to judge. While Rhea’s quilt is certainly bigger, Amy is trying a new sort of binding on this quilt and may run into a few problems while mastering the new technique. With the outcome so uncertain, excitement is definitely in the air at the UCC.

Special guest instructor and local artist Nicole Stevenson of Random Nicole is moving north for the winter and leaving us to finish up her masters degree in San Francisco. Not one to fade quietly into the sunset of the Golden Gate, Nicole has gone out with a bang of three fantastic classes; Transform your Tees, Soy Candlemaking and Spa Goodies.

In Transform Your Tees students had the opportunity to explore different kinds of alterations on their favorite shirts, from adding fabric embellishments to screenprinting new designs. Our soy candlemakers left the class with a collection of all natural soy candles, individually scented with a variety of essential oils and personalized in decoupaged jars. Spa Goodies students learned how to make a full line of natural bath treats designed to pamper and indulge, from bath salt sachets to handmade soap to lip gloss!

Kids Craft Camp came to a close a couple of weeks ago but we can’t stop talking about how much fun we had with our 13 campers every day. All of these exceptionally talented young ladies, ages 8-12, learned new skills and took their projects far beyond what we anticipated. Workshops in sewing, embroidery, zines and comics, mixed media art journaling and jewelry making kept everyone busy no matter what their skill levels were. We’ve had lots of requests for another session in August (which is just a bit too soon for us to plan), but don’t fret, we are already planning for a Winter Break craft camp with more information to come!

Congratulations ladies on all of your super crafty achievements!!

April Winchell, author of Regretsy, hosted Club Etsy last night and it was an amazing turnout! The club night is usually about celebrating what people create and in a way, last night was about that too. It was also about poking fun at the ways we sometimes take ourselves and our ideas too seriously.

The most frequently asked question I get at our club nights is “how do I get my Etsy store noticed?”

One of April’s main points during her presentation was that while her website and book draw attention to people’s creations in a critical way, the response from people who embrace what is featured on her site often brings more attention to these artists and crafters than they might receive on their own. Personally, I’ve always been fascinated with counterculture and its ability to blur the line between low and high art.

April is no stranger to outsider culture herself. She hosted a radio show for several years, sharing unconventional music to her listeners that may never have been heard on a large scale. She genuinely appreciates what she points out as weird or terrible and in fact, her presentation included a slideshow of over 20 items featured on her site that now sit comfortably in her home.

If you haven’t picked up a copy of her book, we have several autographed ones for sale in the store! We even made April a gift in true Regretsy form. Just before we got to take a staff photo with her, April let me know that our gift to her had been “mysteriously stolen” during her book signing! While I wish we could have gotten a group photo with her wearing it, luckily, we snapped several photos of her right when I presented the very special gift, one of which you can see below.

Thanks again to April and everyone who made it out last night! We hope to see you at upcoming Club Etsy meetings on the second Wednesday of every month from 6-8pm.

Last night we held our FIRST EVER sock monkey class at the Urban Craft Center! Each participant brought with them a pair of socks that were transformed into these kitschy little creatures. The studio space was full of creative energy and conversation as we worked into the evening. Everyone in the class went home with a new friend and the know-how to create their own sock monkey in the future! Be sure to join in on our next sock monkey making madness on August 25th from 5-9 pm!

Hi! I'm Rachel

I am the first intern here at the Urban Craft Center. I am currently a senior studying textile design and art history at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, PA. I grew up in Idaho and while I love living on the east coast, felt like I needed to return to some open space. I decided that the perfect place for me to spend a summer would be in sunny California. Luckily I stumbled across the U.C.C and what can I say, it was love at first sight! I feel so very lucky to be chosen as the intern and was ecstatic when I got the call. I love the wonderful ladies who work here, the beautiful and inspiring space and the feeling of community that the combination of these two elements create. Look forward to a weekly update of projects I am working on for the U.C.C.

Along with interning at the U.C.C this summer, I also had the opportunity to travel to Nepal. While there I worked with a woman’s empowerment group called the Chetana Women’s Skill Development Project. This project in Pokhara, Nepal provides underprivileged women with an opportunity to learn design, weaving and sewing skills. With these skills the women are able to find work and therefore provide their children with better education and health care. I spent a month working on the project with the founder Tara Tilminshina. I worked to help them develop their product designs, improve the working conditions for the women and develop a marketing strategy. I will be launching a website for the project in August. It hasn’t even been a week yet since I have been back in the US. While my body is here, my mind still seems to be with the women and children of the CWSDP.

If you are interested in reading more about this project and my travels to Nepal and Africa to empower women through textiles, check out my blog: http://loveoneanothertoday.blogspot.com/

Thank you to everyone who came out to Club Etsy last night! A big special thank you to Deanne Destler from Deja Vu Vintage who gave great advice to everyone and even helped critique some volunteers’ Etsy shops. This time we had our studio projector so everyone got to see Etsy up close.
Join our online Club Etsy to find out what next month’s topic will be!