Pile of Craft is Almost Here

Pile of Craft is only three weeks away! Twice a year the Charm City Craft Mafia hosts a juried craft fair at 2640 St Paul Street. There were 150 applications this year which were narrowed down to the best entries. There will be nearly 70 vendors present including the Charm City Craft Mafia members themselves, a photo booth put on by Anneka Photography, food vendors and a weaving demonstration by Carly Bird Weaves. It's gonna be loads of fun! The craft fair starts at 10am and goes until 5pm. You can check out some of the vendors on the Craft Mafia's website.

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Monogram This

Several weeks ago I received a call from my secret sewing machine scout Robin. Robin works for a non-profit that accepts donations of building materials and other household items. She had received a call from a woman that wanted to donate a 12ft long padded sewing table with cabinet storage and a monogramming machine. The machine had belonged to her mother who had her own drapery and monogramming business. After some coordinating, we worked it out that the machine would be donated directly to Thimble. Huzzah! How exciting! The machine was so large that it didn't fit out of her house so we had to take some time to disassemble it and load it into two separate cars. After a lot of sweating and team work we got the machine into the Thimble storage unit (where all the machines are living until we finalize a space) and re-assembled.

Our list of equipment is really starting to grow!
8 Viking Daisys
1 Singer treadle machine
1 Rex Blind Stitch Hemmer
1 Meistergram monogramming machine

AND! soon a Juki DDL-5550N that I'm picking up this weekend!

Now we are just waiting to hear back on our grant application and trying to finalize a permanent home for Thimble. Progress!

New Equipment!

Thanks to a contact from Carly Bird Weaves , we were able to score two new sewing machines. One is a Rex industrial blind stitch hemmer and the other is a beautiful old Singer treadle machine. We're picking them up on Sunday so there will be more updates on how they are after we get to play around with them. In the mean time, check out this video that shows how a blind stitch hemmer works. Crazy!

What is Thimble?

Hello! and welcome to the Thimble blog.

For those of you who may not know what Thimble is, keep reading...

Thimble is a fiber art cooperative that will be located in the heart of Baltimore's Station North Art District. The co-op will have two parts: a work space and a retail store. The work space would house larger equipment and locker space for people to lock up their crafts and supplies. Machines could be signed out by the hour for members and non-member alike to use. There would always be a supervisor at the space to help people with equipment and crafting issues. People will have the option of becoming a member (1, 6 and 12 month memberships will be available) but non-member are also able to use the equipment for a drop in fee. Instructional classes will be held regularly that will be open to the public for a small fee and free to members. Members will be able to teach classes and be shop supervisors in order to offset their membership fees. The store portion of the co-op will sell fiber art supplies such as fabric, yarn, silk screen ink, notions, etc as well as finished items made by members of the co-op. Another benefit of being a co-op is discounted supplies and a leftover section. The left over section will be where people can take or leave scraps and left over supplies.
The mission of the co-op will be to help part time crafters or people new to crafting get started and to provide a source for fiber art supplies in the city.

Thimble hopes to open its doors (the work space first) in the fall/winter of 2011.