The Make Lounge © Lisa Payne
Craft in London
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By Rebecca Lowrey Boyd
Updated: Wed Sep 23 2009 -
London’s home-made scene has exploded in recent months. Here's our guide to London's best independent craft venues, workshops, fairs and events
Craft events
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Jumble at The Victoria
FREE
Sat Sep 6, Oct 3, Nov 7, Dec 5, The Victoria
Held on the first Saturday of the month, this retro jumble sale has the usual cheap clothes and eccentricities but also, if you feel creative, you can join in with the knitting and crafts club or just chow down on cakes, fry-ups and bloody Marys. You can also get a hair cut from the lovely Steph - girls' cut £20, boys' £15! Read more
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Bobby Dazzler workshops
Rosie and Fumie’s quirky, handcrafted dolls are made using reclaimed fabrics, and are sold at Brick Lane’s Sunday UpMarket and in speciality stores. They also run doll-making workshops for adults and kids. Read more
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Finishing School
Friends Fiona and Becky run a monthly craft evening at a pub in Islington, with the aim of meeting up and making stuff. So far they’ve run crochet, life drawing and needle-felting workshops. All materials are provided, with admission by a small donation. Read more
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The Make Lounge
London’s original contemporary craft venue, The Make Lounge, is the brainchild of former New York magazine journalist Jennifer Pirtle. ‘I yearned to do something creative,’ she explains, ‘but like most of my friends and colleagues I lacked recent crafting experience.’ So when a search for a local sewing class proved futile, Pirtle found the impetus to start up her own venue.
Buoyed from the success of a test launch in the autumn of 2007, Pirtle opened for business in 2008, offering an extensive line-up of workshops (and private parties), including embroidery, sewing, cupcake decorating and jewellery making. Workshops start at £25, with a bi-monthly craft night for £5. This isn’t Nana’s knitting circle: local experts teach you how to make a cute pair of frilly knickers or embroider tattoo-style designs on tea towels.
Spread over two levels of a converted Georgian townhouse in Islington, there are three separate studios which offer a light and vibrant space to learn a new crafty skill. She’s keen to foster a fun and relaxed setting to encourage the more social side of crafting, and provides wine (or a cuppa) and nibbles for all the workshops.
‘There’s always great conversation around the table and events are good fun, without any creative pressure,’ she says. With almost 10,000 Londoners signing up for workshops over the past 12 months (with some travelling from as far as Kent, Oxford and Manchester), the company has scheduled extra workshops to keep up with demand.
In September 2009, Pirtle will launch a new craft shop on site, offering a range of haberdashery supplies, fabric and craft kits, as well as a selection of handmade goods by UK designers.
The Make Lounge, 49-51 Barnsbury St, N1 1TP (7609 0275/www.themakelounge.com). Angel tube. Contact venue for class times.
The Papered Parlour
A relatively new independent craft venue based in Clapham, the Papered Parlour offers a full programme of classes, exhibitions and events in an effort to ‘bring craft to the masses’. According to co-founders Claire Heafford and Louise Hall, ‘London is definitely the place to be if you’re into craft right now. With so many top-class art colleges in the capital, London has always been the place to be for professional designer-makers, but recently there’s been this wonderful explosion of DIY creativity that has made craft and design much more accessible to everyone.’All classes are project-based (screen-print a bag; make a sock monkey; sew your own dress) and start at £55 for a full day, with an emphasis on using recycled materials wherever possible. Upcoming workshops for autumn include beginners’ knitting, silversmithing and photography (‘get your camera off auto’).
Since launching in May 2009 it’s had a strong response to its workshops, with screen-printing and knitting proving the most popular. According to Hall, screen-printing owes its success to the immediacy of the results: ‘Once you have learnt the skill you can set yourself up with a small screen at home – and then there’s no stopping you!’
Her insider’s tip for upcoming workshops, however, is the ‘make a ring day’. ‘The class is lead by an amazing jeweller and she teaches you all the basics of silversmithing. You come away at the end of the day with a beautiful, unique silver ring – it’s such a special feeling to have made a ring yourself, you’ll never want to buy one again!’
The Papered Parlour, 7 Prescott Place, SW4 6BS (7627 8703/www.thepaperedparlour.co.uk). Clapham Common tube. Contact venue for class times.
Create Boutique
The most recent addition to London’s craft scene, Create Boutique offers a select range of fashion and trend-led workshops from their studio in Kentish Town. Here you can learn how to make your own feminine accessories and beauty products, as well as some saucy burlesque nipple tassels.
Launched in June 2009 by Jackie Woosnam-Savage, Create Boutique uses a network of industry specialists to lead the workshops, such as Ruka Johnson, who works with luxury lingerie brand Myla, and milliner Katherine Elizabeth, who has designed hats for Dita Von Teese among others.
The studio is already proving popular with hen parties, who seem to like the idea of combining craft with Champagne. Private workshops can also be organised for parties at home (or any other London location), which can be handy if you want to sort out your own catering and enjoy a more personal setting.
Taking its cue from the current trend for bows is the upcoming workshop Bow-tilicious, where you can learn to make all manner of bow-adorned clutches, purses and jewellery. It’s led by stylist Davy Limliman Vallecer, whose own BOW! accessories collection is stocked at Poste Mistress. Classes start at £35, with all materials provided.
Create Boutique, 8 Fortess Grove, NW5 2HE (07859 028118/www.create-boutique.co.uk). Kentish Town tube. Contact venue for class times.
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5 comments
You missed mentioning Stitch and Bitch London. We teach knitting for free and meet every week somewhere in the city.
See our website at www.stitchandbitchlondon.co.uk
Tooting market, and the Sewing Centre on the Balham HIgh Road (opposite Tooting Bec tube) is great for Southeners.
Where is a good and inexpensive place to buy craft supplies?
hipsters are getting silly now.
Artist/illustrator Annabelle Hartmann and graphic designer Kenn Munk team up to bring "The Artic" to Tea and Make on 22nd August.
Their stall will have arctic-inspired toys for sale as well as a free mask-workshop that'll also allow you to make a frozen-arctic-explorer-beard.