The Women’s Library in East London has gone craft crazy. The current exhibition Hand Made Tales: Women and Domestic Crafts, explores the role of sewing, gardening, knitting and cooking in women’s lives. If you enjoy making things, you need to find time to visit this exhibition.

Hand Made Tales is full of beautiful hand-made items, as well as craft tools, vintage craft books and haberdashery. The exhibition explores connections between craft and history – in times when women had limited rights of ownership, they took care over the items they made. The exhibition also considers emotional connections made by craft, for example when we treasure and use our grandmother’s button jar, sewing box or knitting needles.

To complement the exhibition, artist Nicola Malkin has created some art pieces which have been scattered around the building, including giant knitting needles on the wall.

Last Saturday, London branches of the Women’s Institute took over the exhibition with a fun day of craft demonstrations, tea and free talks.

The most interesting speaker was Anne Stamper, the WI Honorary archivist who explained how the WI preserved, shared and developed craft skills throughout the 20th century, supporting rural communities and holding major exhibitions to showcase expert work.

It was also fascinating to see demonstrations of traditional craft and it inspired me to go home and teach myself tatting (with a lot of help from YouTube tutorials!).

Hand Made Tales runs till 26 March 2011. Free entry. The Women’s Library has an ongoing programme of thoughtful talks, walks and events. www.londonmet.ac.uk/thewomenslibrary

Looking for something to do this weekend? Why not pop up to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace? Yesterday the sewing machines were out under a canopy of fabric scraps!

The biggest craft show in London is packed with stalls selling sewing and knitting supplies, there are exhibitions of work from craft guilds, textile graduates and artists, and you can even take a class to learn something new!

The show is open today and tomorrow. Find out more at www.twistedthread.com

What did you do this weekend? Add your photos to the Visit London Flickr pool.

A gorgeous new craft workshop space called Homemade London has just opened in Portman Village. Last night I popped along and learned how to make a fully lined designer tote bag, made new friends, and did a vanishing trick with a piece of gooey chocolate cake.

Everyone was having so much fun that friendly passers by kept popping in to see what we were up to, admire our bags and find out how they could sign up for the next class!

The class includes tuition, fabric (vintage and designer – my bag above is made from a Marimekko print) and, bliss, a light supper, which is very welcome when you’ve just dashed from work to a class and won’t get home till late.

Homemade London has plenty of sewing machines and space for creating. You can learn how to sew bags and lingerie, make jewellery or sniff out your perfect perfume.

As well as classes, Homemade London also offer a sewing café – you can rent a sewing machine or overlocker from £10 an hour during the day or evening and work on your own projects. And if that wasn’t enough, it’s worth a visit just to see the astonishing sewing machine wallpaper!

Even the location is perfect, if you’ve been shopping on Oxford Street all day and found nothing but inspiration, you can pop round the corner and whip up your perfect accessory!

Classes from £99, Sewing Cafe from £10.
www.homemadelondon.com

Horrockses were known for their bright cotton print summer dresses which were widely available ready made, were easy to wear and effortlessly stylish. To keep the dresses at the cutting edge of fashion, Horrockses worked with lots of young designers and artists, including a young Terrance Conran who sold 20 designs to the firm in 1950.

The exhibition is absolutely stunning, every dress looks as fresh and modern as the day it was made. The dresses pay homage to Dior’s New Look, with full skirts and tiny waists, and the prints are all about having fun – giant roses, lobsters, dancing girls and even a dress featuring radishes and hard boiled eggs!

A Horrockses dress would have cost between £4 and £7, (£80 to £130 in today’s money) so they weren’t cheap, but they were the dresses everyone wanted, saved for or copied. The dresses gained even more prestige after they were worn by the Queen. Princess Margaret wore a Horrockses dress to feed a giraffe in Africa in 1956.

The exhibition includes buyers books with photos, samples and elegant fashion illustrations. (There were two collections each year, with 150-160 styles created from 70-80 prints).

If you have a vintage style summer dress in your wardrobe, I suggest you wear it when you see the exhibition. If you don’t have one, you’ll be desperate for one when you leave! The Fashion and Textile Museum is where the fashionable people will be this summer. Go! Go now!

Horrockses Fashions at the Fashion and Textile Museum. 9 July – 24 October. £6.50 adult, £3.50 concessions. Open Wed – Sun 11:00-18:00. www.ftmlondon.org

On Tuesday night, I popped along to a festival event – Flaming Nora’s corsage making class in the Earl Ferrers pub. The class was a roaring success – more and more people arrived and soon the entire pub was full of over-excited sewers rummaging in boxes of fabric and producing amazing floral creations!

Nora is running a second fun workshop for the festival week – making scary sock monsters, this one is for kids over the age of 5.

The Streatham festival runs to the 11th July and there are talks, walks, quizzes, photography and more. (We think Shakespeare in the Rookery looks brilliant!)

Streatham Festival 3 – 11 July 2010. www.streathamfestival.com

Make Do Mend launched their chic craft party business at London’s 40 Winks on Thursday night with champagne, sewing, sequins and cupcakes!

Make Do Mend organise bespoke craft class parties for you and your friends. Last night we were offered a little taster of their fun, friendly parties with Christmas cupcake decorating and corsage making.

Novice sewers worriedly announced that they couldn’t sew and then dived into the enticing pile of Liberty print fabric and vintage buttons and made beautiful corsages and Christmas tree decorations. Textile tutors Claire Montgomerie and Bee Clinch were warm and entertaining hosts and were full of ideas and advice to make sure that we all learned how to make lovely things.

Downstairs in the kitchen, creative cupcake expert Mae Len Nam was teaching guests how to professionally decorate sparkly silver and red cupcakes which were sweetly wrapped in little bags to take home. (The take home bags were nice in theory but anyone who managed to get a cupcake that tempting home has more willpower than me!)

40 Winks is the perfect venue for crafting. This stylish townhouse owned by internationally acclaimed interior designer David Carter is full of design inspiration and beautifully crafted objects – the house regularly features in magazine photo shoots.

To keep the house in pristine condition we were asked to leave our shoes at the door and sat around wearing little red fluffy slippers which added an even cosier, comforting atmosphere to the evening.

Bespoke craft parties are a lovely way to celebrate a birthday, a hen night or learn a new skill with your friends. One class Make Do Mend host is a baby shower party where each of your guests knits or crochets a blanket square for a baby blanket. Too cute!

Make Do Mend will arrange a class for you and your friends in a chic local venue or they can host a craft party in your home. Prices are per person and depend on the venue and your craft desires. You can find more information about their parties and classes at makedomenders.blogspot.com.

Everyone attending a Make Do Mend party gets an exciting little goodie bag to take home so you can keep practicing and playing with the techniques you’ve learned.

One of London’s best kept secrets, the London Sewing Machine Museum in Tooting Bec is open this weekend and you can visit for free! There’s always something thrilling about exploring a small specialist museum.

If you’re obsessed with sewing or machinery or both, you’ll be rubbing your knees with glee when you see this collection. The museum has two rooms packed with vintage machines, funny shaped bobbins, original packaging and sewing machine themed statues. You can see a sewing machine which was presented to Queen Victoria’s daughter as well as one shaped like a clown sitting at a table!

Local sewing machine experts from the sewing machine warehouse downstairs are on hand to tell you fascinating facts about the collection.

The museum is free and open between 2pm and 5pm on the first Saturday of the month. You have to be over 16 years old to visit because there’s lots of machinery about.

If your visit inspires you to get sewing, you can pop downstairs and buy your own machine.

And next door to the museum is a big haberdashery shop where you can pick up yarn, fabric and notions. On my recent visit, the haberdashery shop staff were knowledgeable and friendly, and weren’t even fazed when a customer popped in for craft supplies while walking her ferret on a lead.

For information about the London Sewing Machine Museum and shops, visit www.sewantique.com