Stitching And Bitching Downtown: Not Your Grandma’s Bag
Posted April 11, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Quilting, knitting and sewing are pastimes many may associate with bespectacled grandmothers making baby booties or toilet paper roll cozies. But these arts are enjoying a huge resurgence in Toronto and are attracting scores of young women, thanks in part to the huge amount of websites dedicated to the subjects.
A new generation is embracing the stitch and bitch, gathering together in chic and cozy downtown settings to put their contemporary spin on art forms perfected by their grandmothers.
Karyn Valino, the owner of The Workroom at Queen Street West and Brock Avenue, opened her Parkdale shop in mid-October of 2007 and offers sew and craft-by-the-hour space and equipment rentals and a selection of bright and boldly printed fabrics usually only available online – textiles coveted by many crafters.
Aside from the business aspect of her shop, Valino, who once taught sewing in Manhattan, said creating a place for people to come together and work on projects was very important to her.
“I really felt the need to create a community space. That was definitely one of my main goals,” she explained as her golden lab Maisy wandered the shop receiving pats from sewers.
Stitch and bitch nights were something she knew she wanted to provide from the beginning. The Workroom holds the free drop-in monthly.
At the April stitch and bitch, Claire Milne, a children’s illustrator and craft blogger, and Katrina Kilroy, a midwife, sit on a couch in the back of the shop chatting while working on their quilts in the evening light.
They believe the renewed interest in sewing and knitting is changing perceptions about the crafts.
“It’s heaven for me because I’ve always done it,” Milne explained as she added stitches to her first quilt.
“This store is such a haven for this kind of modern craft. … You try to explain to people that you’re not some granny knitting booties for people.”
Kilroy said in the past, the few times she has taken classes she didn’t have much in common with her fellow quilters.
“It’s like, when there’s a sign behind the cash that says ‘Don’t worry, we won’t tell your husband how much you spent’,” she said laughing.
But shops catering to contemporary crafters are allowing women of all ages to breathe new life into the art forms with interesting new fabrics, yarns and other natural materials.
The weekly stitch and bitch at The Knit Café at 1050 Queen St. West, near Ossington, often draws a good crowd of passionate knitters every Tuesday night.
Molly Leonard, a first year law student at the University of Toronto, said she hangs out at the spot every week to work on projects, shoot the breeze and share ideas. An avid knitter, she also hits another stitch and bitch on Wednesdays over at Lettuce Knit in Kensington Market.
She said the scene is big in Toronto, with several organized groups around the city, including a monthly event at the Spotted Dick pub on Bloor near Yonge called the Drunken Knitters.
“If it weren’t for knitting, there are a lot of people that I spend a lot of time with who I would never, never talk to otherwise,” Leonard said as she stitched her project, a purple mohair sweater. “There are some groups where you talk about politics, there are others where you don’t talk about politics.”
She started knitting as a kid, “but I only got into it seriously three years ago and I absolutely credit the Internet.”
There are a staggering amount of blogs and websites dedicated to knitting and crafting online – YouTube lists over 17,000 videos related to knitting and there are over three million blogs dedicated to the subject listed on Google. Leonard believes this online presence is responsible for the growing popularity of the craft among young women. A site run by a Canadian knitter who calls herself the Yarn Harlot is one of the most popular.
At a weekly stitch and bitch at Lettuce Knit on Nassau Street, Alexis Da Silva-Powell, a dancer who also works at the shop, said she, too, credits the Internet for the growing interest in needlework, and credits knitting for familiarizing her with the world of weblogs.
“I had never been introduced to a blog until it was a knitting blog,” she admitted. “Blogs did not exist in my world, until I found out about (knitting bloggers).”
Knitters now gather in online forums, exchanging ideas, sharing unique patterns or tried and tested techniques, but back at the Knit Café Yen Chu, a graphic designer working on a pair of purple socks, said this stitch and bitch is about a lot more than just sharing tips about the craft.
“I’ve made some really good friends here,” she said. “You sit here and you talk. It’s funny, I think knitting is almost like therapy, somehow because your mind is on the knitting it frees your mind to talk about whatever you want. It’s like a stream of consciousness.”
And some knitters quite literally consider their weekly stitch and bitch meetings a form of therapy. Deirdre Kavanagh drives all the way downtown from Markham for the event at the Knit Cafe every week.
She credits her time at the crafting cafe and her friends there for helping her quit smoking. The house painter said she has been knitting for a year but only took it up seriously about 10 weeks ago when she decided to butt out and she’s turned into a prolific needleworker. Since giving up cigarettes she has knit two shawls, two sets of gauntlets (gloves with extended cuffs), four pairs of slippers and four dishcloths.
“Now I have to find away to put away the paint brush and do this full time,” she said.
As for upcoming trends in the world of needlework – hyperbolic crochet is a decorative art that has taken hold in the city and gained some popularity. Da Silva-Powell said Japan is having a big influence on new techniques, including an interesting art called Amigurumi.
“It’s about crocheting very tiny, like stuffed animals almost,” she explained on the porch of the Kensington knitting hangout. “Like little tiny French vanilla ice cream cones that have a beret on and a face.”
You probably won’t find that in your grandmother’s knitting bag.
Here are some sites local knitters said they frequent:
