Interview with Andie Reeves: Founder of Cape Town Craft Club

Andie Reeves is the founder and facilitator of the much-loved Cape Town Craft Club: a growing community space which offers regular, inclusive Craft Nights where beginners and experts alike can sit together and connect while making.

Reeves is an active member of Cape Town’s creative world: when she isn’t found making keen crafters feel at home at one of her Craft Nights, she is co-hosting the hilarious podcast ‘Two Freaks Notice’ alongside artist and best friend Sitaara Stodel. Or, she can be found offering her bubbly personality (a staple at Craft Nights) at stand-up comedy gigs across the city. Arguably, making the world a warmer, kinder place seems to be one of her prowesses.

After chatting with her, it’s quite clear that this warmth extends into the core foundations of Cape Town Craft Club too. As its website accurately states, it “gets creative people in the city together to craft in a laid-back, fun and judgement-free space”. Craft Nights are not exclusive to the professionals: in fact, it’s encouraged for those feeling out of their depths to come, perhaps learn something new, enjoy something, or make something for no particular purpose. To prioritise enjoying a beautiful evening and connecting with people over a shared love of making something slowly, intentionally, and with love.

Hosted on the first and second Wednesday of each month at The Ladder on Bree Street, Craft Nights are a peaceful space to enjoy making alongside friends and potential friends-to-be. Creative projects can sometimes feel like isolating tasks, and the club offers community, guidance, sharing.

Rather than a structured classroom space, participants bring whatever supplies or projects they would like, and continue with their own processes – while gaining some tips or funny stories along the way. It’s a slightly more take-what-you-like approach: if you prefer to crochet quietly in a cosy, buzzing room, this is as much an option as chatting with new or familiar faces. This is all facilitated by Andie, whose knowledge-base of skills can offer tidbits of guidance, as well as a space where it certainly feels safe to ask even a stranger.

Check Cape Town Craft Club’s website to see upcoming Craft Nights, hosted at The Ladder. Occasionally, Craft Nights are held at the iconic Labia Theatre, where guests can bring along their projects and get to work during a cosy classic film, while the theatre lights stay on.

Reeves has also started an impressive charity drive, called Kind Craft Club, to use creative skills to give back. Started during the COVID-19 pandemic with a blanket drive, it has evolved into a series of drives where volunteers can make toys or beanies (dependent on each drive) for those in need. From ensuring a child receives their favourite animal as a festive gift specially made for them, to carefully curating blankets made from donated squares: the Kind Craft Club is a dignity-focused ongoing charity project expanding the joy crafting can foster. Check out the Club’s website for more details on how to volunteer and help with this fantastic cause.

Simona Stone had the chance to sit down with Andie Reeves and discuss what Cape Town Craft Club is all about, as well as its impact upon the lives it has clearly touched through its growth over the years.

Andie Reeves on Cape Town Craft Club

S: In your view, what is Cape Town Craft Club? Please tell me all about it, and how it came about.

A: I’ve been sewing since I left school – all very self taught. I started with sewing clothes, and then I got to crochet and embroidery and all that. Then, in 2017, Sitaara’s sister at Veld and Sea said, “I see you’re doing embroidery, do you want to come teach a workshop at Veld and Sea?”. So, that was kind of the first Cape Town Craft Club workshop I ever had… For a few years, I was teaching embroidery, crochet, weaving, and sewing at various venues like the Norval Foundation, Veld and Sea, The Ladder, and Oranjezicht City Farm.

At this point, I brought up how I had actually attended her floral embroidery workshop at the Oranjezicht City Farm a couple years ago. This was the first time I came across the work Andie has been doing. It was the class that taught me the foundational skills of embroidery in a single afternoon: it was the basis of a hobby I still enjoy as a way to wind down and peel my eyes away from screens.

A: …In 2021, I used to invite my friends around… And we would meet once a week and bring our crafts. We would draw words from a hat: make a craft that relates to the word. It was very cute, and it was really motivating to think, “I have to make something, because next week I’m meeting the gang, and I want to show them what I made”. And I really wanted to expand it… so then I approached The Ladder, because I taught some workshops there in the past… The couple who own it: he’s a priest, and a stained glass artist, and his wife is this amazing painter. Both are very artistic.

So I pitched the idea… And he said, “Yeah, I’ll cut you a key today”.

S: That’s such a great story.

A: Yeah, so sweet… So now I do twice a month. In the beginning, I’d be begging my friends to please come – ‘otherwise it’s just gonna be me and two other people’. And now it’s really taken off in the last year or so. And it kind of sells itself, and there are a lot of regulars. So I don’t have to beg my friends to come anymore…

…The reason I wanted to move away from workshops and more to a craft class is because… I found it a bit frustrating to be teaching when I wanted to be doing.

I found, I’d get to the end of my workshop and… I felt jealous of the participants, but I knew I wanted to be crafting with people. Making stuff: you’re often just sitting at home alone listening to a podcast… which is great, but it’s just so nice to be around people while you’re making stuff. And that’s how I made friends. And I’ve seen other people making friends… it’s also been so special to see, say a 70 year old woman and a 9 year old boy crafting together.

S: It seems like you’ve really been a catalyst in creating a community around crafting, which I guess is quite an ancient ideal: people gathering to make useful and decorative items. You’re generating this community based around creating…

A: Yes, especially when you craft so often, you’ll show people something and they’ll say, “you should sell it!”. And I’m trying to push back against that: the point is not to make things to sell all the time. Sometimes, it’s just to make and share with others and learn from each other. It’s very much making for the sake of making… It’s more about just having fun with it.

S: So it’s really about moving away from the pressures around productivity that we are so plagued by today. I think a lot of artists, creatives and crafters feel that there’s this constant push for creating commodities of ‘value’ to justify spending time on something by being able to find financial gain from it, and pushing back from that. Was there anything specific that really drew you to creating these spaces and communities specifically around crafting?

A: I really love socialising, and I appreciate that it’s quite easy for someone like me to socialise. But a lot of people really struggle to make new friends or meet new people out of their circle… especially, I think crafters are often introverts. So I really liked the idea of… the ‘passive hang’, basically… It’s passive socialising.

So if you come and you’re feeling shy, you’ve got your cross stitch and you can just keep your head down, and you get to listen to everyone else’s conversations. If you feel awkward, there’s no judgement… And I try to facilitate conversation and make people feel comfortable.

I’m one of those people who would like to live on a commune with my friends… I’m very interested in moving away from the hyper-individualised society that we’re in, where everyone’s just on their own track and doing their own thing.

There is quite a boom in craft… And I was kind of initially riding that wave with teaching embroidery and I realised that my passion was not teaching, but was more facilitating. I’m very passionate about making a nice vibe and making sure everyone’s having fun, everyone’s engaged.

The club has been about making this other space: something that’s a regular thing, that is about doing something together but it’s not outcomes-based.

S: Crafting has historically been dismissed as a trivial and very ‘feminine’ activity, where its values and skill sets aren’t recognised. Would you say the Craft Club is directly engaging with those kinds of attitudes in any way?

A: I lived with fine artists for so long, and we had lots of discussions about what is art and what is considered craft. And I still struggle with it, because, for example, this dress took me hours to make, but it’s not considered art. It’s considered, ‘women’s work’, which is seen as ‘trivial’…

There are mainly women who come to the Craft Club. Obviously, it’s not intentional, and it’s great to have other people come. But it is really special to have them come, because the specific conversations that take place are also really cool. There have been times we have seen people tearing up sharing something like their birth story, or sharing, “Oh my gosh, you also have this medical thing”. And then they get to talk about it. It’s really sweet…

People come in and you can see they’re quite chuffed. Or, they’ll bring something, that they’re not even working on that night, because they know there’s going to be a group of people who are excited to hear about it and know how long that took to make.

S: I feel like there’s a real misunderstanding in today’s consumer culture as well – we have this idea that everything has to be really quick to make, and clothing should be this instant thing that can be bought immediately. That’s not something that humans have actually been operating with for most of history. So it does feel like a push back against that system as a whole, which feels inherently feminist too, I guess.

A: In the last two years or so, I’ve learned way more about sustainability. I think the craft world has been booming: you see these videos of people churning out – even though it’s small hand-made stuff – but it’s all centred around ‘I made all these crocheted things, and you can buy them’.

That’s what I really like about this [club]: people are just making things slowly. And, I’m feeling more that the older I get, the more I’m wanting to make for the sake of making. Whereas I used to make, like, three dresses a week, and I was churning out stuff. And now I’m moving on to only using natural fibres for example…

S: Have there been any particular highlights for you, since starting the Cape Town Craft Club?

A: There was this one night where this woman came in – I think she was 85 – and she was dropped off by her son. She’d obviously gone to the craft shop and just said, “I want to learn macrame”, and just arrived with her rope and nothing else. She arrived, and said, ‘I’ve come to learn’. Sometimes people will come and misunderstand… they think it’s a class, and I’m the instructor. But, I took a breathe and thought to see this as an opportunity. We both spent the night watching macrame YouTube videos. We macrame’d these little Christmas decorations together, and it was just so cute. At the end, her son came picked her up, and it had been a birthday present to come and learn – her husband had just passed away. I feel like the elderly are so often overlooked, and completely erased from our society…

There’s been a few older people who have come – because I find it really sad, especially as a woman, how when you’re over a certain age, you’re seen as kind of irrelevant – there’s all these older women who are really talented. Often they’ve been hesitant as if to say, “is it okay that I’m here?”. And then everyone just welcomes everyone with warm arms.

And then I think that the big highlight has been in the last year, how it’s taken off, and I’m not having to hustle so hard… I think people are seeing the value in it. And then also the Kind Craft Club, which is the toy drive.

And the other highlights have been seeing more friendships and making friends myself, and just that every night, at the end of Craft Night, I just feel so full and happy: people have told me, “I really needed this”. It feels like it’s more than just coming and crocheting or coming and sewing…

It certainly is. For more information about the Cape Town Craft Club, upcoming Craft Nights, and other work Andie gets up to, visit the website here.