15—MARYLEBONE JOURNAL
FEATURES
to blame my mother for my lack of craft skills - yet a glance at the craft-manual lined bookshelves tell a different story. Jane is entirely self-taught. “I taught myself how to crochet
‘Does it matter if you’ve sewn the sellotape to the material?’ I ask, when I’ve finally managed to lace two squares together. Jane smiles and shakes her head. ‘It will come off eventually. And besides, that bit of the quilt is the back’
and knit when I was eight. Then I fancied jewellery making when I got older. I don’t have a natural ability to do netball, say, but I do seem to be able to pick up crafts quite easily”. It’s been an expensive occupation:
good materials don’t come cheap, and craft fairs and markets are like honey traps to one so minded. While these days Jane can look up patterns and instructions online, she is at the same time painfully aware that make do and mend doesn’t always add up to a saving. “Before you know it you’re spending £200 on jewellery making equipment – then with patchwork there’s all the material you end up buying,” she confesses. “Sometimes I struggle to tell myself to stop.” The secret, she says, is to see
crafting as a means of enjoyment and relaxation first, and any savings you make as a bonus. “I always say in my class, it’s all very well to say DIY saves money, but this stuff isn’t cheap. It’s
more about the satisfaction than anything else.” Part of that satisfaction lies in
the fruits of your labour – after all, nothing gets through like a gift you’ve made yourself. Yet for Jane and the rest of her industrious clients, the rewards run much deeper than homemade glove puppets. One lady Jane tells us about was referred by her psychologist to try knitting for relaxation. Another came with her daughter when she asked for help with a school sewing project, and she realised she didn’t know where to start. Yet while there are as many reasons to try Tea & Crafting as there are classes to choose from (and I counted six on the knitting section alone), it’s only as I tie the final knot in my patchwork ‘quilt’ that I discover the common thread. It’s only two squares by two
squares, it wouldn’t cover a mouse, and it’s like a badly wrapped present at the back. But as I reflect on the fun and the skills I’ve picked up in the past two hours, I find I don’t much mind about the end result. It’s the doing it myself that counts.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100