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Crafts CouncilStories

Up-skill online: craft classes you can do from home


ByCrafts magazine

26 March 2020

Learning made easy


Crafts magazine

26 March 2020

  • Making tutorials
  • Craft and wellbeing

Weaver Christabel Balfour demonstrating techniques on her online tutorial. Photo: courtesy the artist

Craft has the power to stimulate, inspire, occupy and soothe us – all the more reason to keep making through this difficult period. We have selected online classes – from workshops by individual experts to institutions offering professional development courses – that will help you learn a new skill. We’d love to see the fruits of your efforts, so share them on Instagram using the hashtag #todayimmaking. If you come across other classes you think we should include in this list, do let us know.


  • Karolina Merska making paper chandeliers for her Yodomo tutorials. Photo: courtesy Yodomo

  • Sian Machlan of Shoorah Shoorah's rope necklace tutorial for Yodomo. Photo: Yodomo

Various crafts

Online craft courses are not a new phenomenon but the platforms offering them are now coming into their own, now that people are looking for ways to occupy themselves at home. Yodomo offers everything from spoon carving and basket-weaving to candle making and upcycling, with lessons from a range of teachers – and has launched a platform to advise makers on creating revenue streams online in light of the coronavirus crisis. Similarly, Creative Live offers several courses in needlecraft, papercraft and jewellery design, as well as in marketing, sales and operating successfully on Etsy. The tutors on Craft Courses are also now turning en masse towards teaching virtual classes.

Skillshare and the Centre for Excellence offer thousands of classes added by its online community of makers and teachers. Udemy and Domestika have a range of courses geared towards improving your business and professional skills, while recruitment service Reed has a list of courses that give you CPD points and professional accreditation – in stitching, floristry and more. Art Girl Rising, a campaign that supports women in art, has sessions on marketing and selling your art, building an online community and the business of art.

With exhibitions in flux, museums are also trying to reach their audiences online, including through craft classes. The Craft Contemporary website offers step-by-step instructions for easy craft projects with items and materials you have easy access to, including hammered flowers, paper marbling with shaving cream, landscape painting with yarn and printmaking with bubbles. The Make and Do section of the V&A website has a range of activities, including sewing your own versions of Mary Quant dresses, a Frida Kahlo-style huipil tunic, works inspired by Freddie Robins and DIY with plywood.


Making pottery with the British Ceramics Biennial's #ClayAtHome digital programme. Photo: courtesy BCB

Clay and pottery

The British Ceramics Biennial's online learning programme Clay At Home explores everything from the connections between ceramics and penicillin to making salt dough and 'isolation tiles'. The Clay Studio, which normally offers classes at its Philadelphia studios, is offering a range of online how-to videos, artist talks, and live conversations, also under the title Clay at Home.

Individuals are also sharing their skills, including Sarah Core. “I have been a potter for nearly 10 years and I can post clay to you safely with my daily walk to the letterbox,” she said at the start of the first UK lockdown. Core is sending out 1kg parcels of air-dry clays, along with project sheets and paints, to participants, then conducting online workshops to help everyone on their way, including 'mindfulness clay workshops'. Ana Kerin of Kana London's Stay at Home Kana Clay Club is aimed at a range of skill levels – from complete beginners to those who have previously participated in one of its classes, sending out boxes of clay and then advising you on setting up your home studio, finding makeshift tools around the house and actually working with clay. When rules allow, you can get Kana to fire your works.

For the braver and more ambitious, the Ceramic School has instructions on how to make a pottery wheel out of a ceiling fan and a plastic bucket. Careful, please!


Weaver Maria Sigma offers at-home weaving tutorials. Photo: the artist

Textiles

Artist and tapestry weaver Christabel Balfour is offering online courses in geometric weaving and rug weaving, including how to make your own upright loom. Maria Sigma offers video tutorials in weaving at home, as well as selling a beginner and intermediate level 'weaving from waste' kit on her website. Tilly Walnes, founder of Tilly and the Buttons, has a wealth of sewing patterns, books and online workshops for DIY dressmakers, as well as troubleshooting, fabric tips and hacks. Meanwhile, with a mission to inspire the next generation of makers, Wool and the Gang has tutorials in knitting, crochet and macramé, as well as a range of free patterns and kits they can send you – categorised by level as well as what it is you want to make. Meanwhile, sustainable womenswear label Lowie has made its online workshops free, including darning, reverse applique and mending through Japanese sashiko.


Still from a spoon-carving video tutorial by The Spoon Club. Photo: courtesy The Spoon Club

Woodworking

Learn to whittle your own spoon through a range of online classes, including the Spoon Club, which adds a new film every week on designing, carving and decorating a spoon, including contributions by guest instructors and advanced classes. A wider selection of woodworking courses is available through Wood Skills, including instructions on using handtools, modules on the traditional Japanese kumiko technique and tutorials in furniture design.

Repairing and mending

There’s an inherent sense of frugality in this moment of shop closures and overstretched delivery networks, and also an opportunity to root through our wardrobes to find things to reuse, repair and remodel. Fast Fashion Therapy’s website features videos and blog posts giving tips and demonstrations on how to mend and upcycle clothes. Meanwhile, Tickover’s Instagram tutorials on 'conscious hand embroidery' and 'repair and self-care' are aimed at 'exposing the fashion industry one stitch at a time'.

Terrazzo

Katie Gillies’ workshop teaches you to make your own terrazzo coasters and trays. Salt Studios, run by designer-maker Francesca Pappacoda, offers terrazzo plant pot workshops, in which you learn to pigment Jesmonite with your choice of colours and make personalised terrazzo chips to cast your own plant pot.


Paper marbling tutorial by Lucy McGrath of Marmor Paperie. Photo: Jeremy Johns Photography

Paper

The founder of Mamor Paperie Lucy McGrath usually offers paper-marbling workshops in her studio at Cockpit Arts in Deptford but is now selling marbling kits on her website. Modern calligrapher Edlyl Anne Asis is offering virtual classes, as well as personalised kits to help you get started.

Candle-making

Buckinghamshire-based Candle by Events is holding live online candle-making workshops and webinars, as well as opening access to 20 online videos that guide you through the process and putting together beginners’ kits that include reusable moulds, several types of natural wax, dyes, oils and more.


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