If you know anything about alternative crafts in the DC area, then you’ve heard about Crafty Bastards! Hosted and organized by the Washington DC City Paper, a weekly newspaper known throughout the city for its quirky point of view and alternative coverage of events, Crafty Bastards is the biggest and best-known craft fair in DC.
The City Paper held its first Crafty Bastards Art and Craft Fair in 2004 in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of DC, with more than 100... → Read the rest of this article
Valerie Williams
Valerie Williams is a designer and sewer who loves fabric, fashion, and handmade things. You can find her on
Twitter or
Facebook or read her musings on personal style and sewing at her blog,
insatiable need.
As a lover of handmade things, and a supporter of artists sharing their talents with the world, I wish there was a Fenton Street Market in every neighborhood.
The brainchild of Silver Spring, Maryland resident Hannah McCann, the Fenton Street Market is a weekly exhibition of local talent and entrepreneurship that began as a two-weekend experiment at the end of 2009.
Hannah knew there was creativity and innovation in her neighborhood that was just waiting for a... → Read the rest of this article
Valerie Williams
Valerie Williams is a designer and sewer who loves fabric, fashion, and handmade things. You can find her on
Twitter or
Facebook or read her musings on personal style and sewing at her blog,
insatiable need.
Washington DC can seem like quite the sleepy little town in August…Congress and the city council are both out of session, and everyone else seems to be on vacation. But there are still some gems hidden around the city, and one of them is a brand-new outdoor arts market, that was nothing but an idea a mere thirty days ago.
Beth Baldwin is an artist and crafter, and a former employee of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. As an experienced event planner,... → Read the rest of this article
Valerie Williams
Valerie Williams is a designer and sewer who loves fabric, fashion, and handmade things. You can find her on
Twitter or
Facebook or read her musings on personal style and sewing at her blog,
insatiable need.
An idea that is fairly old news in cities like LA and New York has found its way to Washington, DC: the short-term artist incubator. The Temporium is a pop-up shop that serves as a temporary home for local designers, and as a way to utilize an otherwise-empty urban space, while injecting life and culture into an up-and-coming neighborhood.
Philippa Hughes, a DC area cultural activist (The Pink Line Project), is the mastermind behind the Temporium, utilizing support... → Read the rest of this article
Valerie Williams
Valerie Williams is a designer and sewer who loves fabric, fashion, and handmade things. You can find her on
Twitter or
Facebook or read her musings on personal style and sewing at her blog,
insatiable need.
Ten years ago, I spent a long and cold winter living in a small town in Iowa. There wasn’t a lot of variety and the lack of locally-owned restaurants and retail stores was depressing. As we all know, in these quiet corners of the country, Big box and chain stores have reigned supreme for the past twenty years. But now things are most decidedly different–even from the time I lived there. With the internet, makers of all stripes and colors now have a venue to sell there wares.... → Read the rest of this article
Emily Anderson
Emily is the author of three books, mother of two small children, wife to one husband, and designer living in New York City. Emily also writes about the creative life, and her pursuit of all things that are good with style on her
blog.
