Bringing Craft to Children in Need in San Diego

Happy New Year!

We recently hosted a craft supply sale to raise funds for a new dust collection system in our woodshop. We had a fantastic turnout, and it has helped us to make more space in the studio as we start to organize in the new year. It also reminded us about how much people love to create things!

Next up is taking a look at all of our Craft Kits and looking for the best way to package them and keep getting them out to the public and into the hands of children in need. We have a new team member, Viri, who is dedicating some of her time to helping us rebrand the Craft Kits and come up with beautiful new packaging and instructions for each one.

We're currently in the process of adding new string art kits to our lineup. String art is made by using piece of wood (we use upcycled lumber and sheet goods in our kits). Then the student places a paper template with dots over the piece of wood. The dots tell them where they'll hammer in each nail. Once all of the nails are hammered in --- only halfway, not all the way through! The template is removed and the stringing fun begins. A string is tied on to one nail, and then it gets wrapped around each nail head as the student goes around the outline and then fills in the middle. There are so many fine motor skills at work here! Keep the tension of the string and don't let it unravel!

We recommend stringing the outline first, and then filling in the interior of the design after. The color of string can be  changed out for details based on the template design (take a look at the mushroom sample in the image). It becomes a bit like a puzzle to fill in all of the design without leaving any holes or blank spots. You can also take a very geometric, organized approach like the sample with the colorful wheel. 

The wonderful thing about this project is that it's very scalable-- meaning we can serve up more challenging templates for older students or make it more accessible for neurodivergent students. We can also change out the string for littles or use embroidery floss for students interested in more intricate details. Here's a fun fact about our studio: we don't buy acrylic yarn because it's essentially plastic and is bad for the environment. We do accept it as a donation though in an effort to divert it from going directly to the landfill, and we sometimes use it for projects like string art! 

Thank you for your continued support!

In gratitude, 

Steffanie

Craft2Gether is ramping up for the upcoming school year. We're partnering with new organizations to increase what we're giving to the community through Craft2Gether. 

In June we hosted our biggest event ever called Fiber Fest where we sheared sheep at our studio in a family-friendly, all ages environment. It was wonderful to see children experience how wool is processed and spun into yarn. Fiber Fest has expanded our reach into the local fiber community, and we're riding the wave with new project ideas! 

NEW IDEA:

First, some background: In addition to providing craft education for the public, we also accept donations from companies that are looking to discard materials. We took on a donation in 2023 of a giant ugly christmas sweater... one large enough to fit the Statue of Liberty! That sweater, made of acrylic yarn (essentially plastic) was slated to go to the landfill. All 400lbs of it! So we took it on as a donation, and we've slowly been testing the fabric and coming up with creative ways to use 400lbs of acrylic knit fabric that happens to be the color kelly green. If you're not familiar, kelly green is the green color that you'd find on a pool table. Or the bright green color of leprechaun pants! It's not the most sought-after color, so that adds to the difficulty of creating worthy projects. It's a huge task to save the landfill from a huge sweater. We've been making pet blankets and donating them to local rescues and shelters. We still have about half of the fabric to upcycle, and the next round of creative ideas is to use it for fiber arts craft kits through Craft2Gether. We will stretch the fabric over frames made in our studio from upcycled wood. Then we'll teach children how to do various needlepoint techniques with it. We will also make a floor-standing giant frame that will live in our building and make it an opportunity for the community to come and do embroidery and patchwork on it -- a living, interactive public art piece. 

This effort and project idea is led by our founder, Steffi Dotson, an artist and craftsperson. She will work with the community to upcycle the sweater parts into beautiful works of art that help spread knowledge and skills in visibile mending, embroidery, hand stitching, and needlepoint. 

Although the supplies for the fiber arts kits are mainly found objects and upcycled materials, we still need funds for thread, needles, scissors, and other kit necessities. Much of the support needed for this project goes toward paying artists, teachers, and craftspeople to help design, prepare the kits and teach skills to the community. Funding also supports supplies needed for packaging and labeling, flyers, posters, and shipping fees for the kits themselves. Any amount helps!

Thank you again for your support of this project!

Kind regards, 

The Craft Collective Team