Not just for Girl Guides anymore: The Seamrippers Craft Collective
Pauline Hadfield, The Peak
I was standing in the grocery store - bored while my boyfriend looked at muscle building magazines, while sights of greased-up men in too-small Speedos danced through my head - when I noticed a puzzling magazine: Vogue Knitting. Vogue knitting? Haute couture in a knitting basket? Supposedly "the ultimate magazine for today's hand crafter," it was so cute and trendy! Knitting is in, I thought.
Enter the Seamrippers Craft Collective, the cultured West Coast answer to questions arising from the seeming oxymoron of "Vogue Knitting." A group of art students, art school dropouts, and other artsie folk came together with a common absence in their lives: a place to talk about crafts and craft-related activities. With a common interest in creating an accessible and un-snobby environment, filling the niche for contemporary individuals with minimal funds, Seamrippers Craft Collective was born.
Jen Kovach, one of the collective's founding members, informed me of the non-profit and unpretentious ways of Seamrippers. After a year of fundraising burlesque shows and bake sales, they purchased their space: a basement suite on West Pender in Downtown Vancouver. They then began tranforming the dark basement into what it is today: a labour of love, if you will.
Filling their basement with generously donated sewing machines, a serger, an industrial sink, a loom, and a gargantuan cutting table, among various other crafty supplies, they provide an outlet for those inspired DIY-ers with an irritating lack of space and expensive equipment to create. And they also have dance parties!
With collective knowledge of silk screening, knitting, sewing, and more, they offer a $25 membership fee, which includes an all-access pass to their equipment and events, as well as a free table at their regular craft fairs. Exciting classes such as "Intro to Sewing Machines" and "Make Your Own Panties" are offered over a six-week Seamrippers semester. A gallery is also occasionally erected amongst the sewing machines and miscellaneous craft supplies, with exhibits showing for three weeks to a month.
Seamrippers is a collective with volunteers and members who craft hard and party hard. Their parties are usually connected with the closing of a gallery show - as having dance parties at openings has proven to be too dangerous for the art - and each has underlying Seamrippers fundraising schemes. On June 11, Seamrippers will be hosting Bookmobile, an inspirational Montreal-based collective organisation focused on DIY publishing and zines. As well as holding bookmaking classes in honour of this visit, Seamrippers will also release their new summer Workshop Calendar on that Saturday. These workshops will run through June and July. Other plans in the works include Sundays of Knitting in the Park and Drawing workshops.
The word "crafts" tends to conjure images of little doilies, old ladies with arthritic, liver-spotted fingers, and dried-up flowers in a mesh bag tied with a ribbon in your Mom's underwear drawer. So unsexy. In order to stay away from these images, I will leave you with this: Think innovative punk rockers with safety pins through freshly pierced ears. Dread-locked hippies who have just created a home-made bong. Or if nothing else, the inspiring thought of altering your own vintage clothes rather than buying overpriced post-altered items that just don't fit you right. It's a money-saver. And it's hip.Visit www.seamrippers.ca or call 689-SEAM for further details.