We had a very busy February and there’s still more excitement to come in March.  Whether you are a regular crafter, or occasional supporter we’re sure you will find something interesting in this month’s newsletter.

 News

We continue to be lucky enough to receive some excellent quality donations of fabric, yarn, equipment etc for which we are very grateful.  We are also very grateful for the support of the many people who make all our activities possible, including our amazing group leaders and directors without whom Tadcrafters would not be possible.

In February we donated

  • 14 personal effects bags to St Leonard’s Hospice
  • Donated 11 bags of surplus fabric and 25 pattern books to Cone Exchange
  • 50 baby hats to Harrogate Hospital Maternity Ward
  • 6 worry monsters to North Yorkshire Children and Family Services practitioners
  • 29 jewellery bags and 10 personal effects bags to St. Leonard’s Hospice
  • 40 twiddlemuffs to Carers Resource

and took part in or hosted

  • Yorkshire Film Archive “Nature Matters” short film and talk from guest speaker and YFA lead, Martha Cattell.
  • Workshop with Sarah Corbett and young people from the Barn
  • Talk from Sarah Corbett from the Craftivist Collective
  • De-stash stall at SCRAP CIC in Selby
  • Tadcaster drop-in session
  • TadGrafters drop-in session
  • Sherburn drop-in session
  • Talk to the White Rose Quilters

We had two really exciting and successful events in February. Thanks to everyone who attended or helped in the arrangements to make them so special. The Yorkshire Film Archive’s “Nature Matters” film and the visit from the internationally recognised craftivist Sarah Corbett were possible due to a York St. John University Community Research Grant and our work to support Sustainable Tadcaster. We all need to take some responsibility to ensure future generations do not suffer from the effects of climate change so Sustainable Tadcaster is trying to make it as easy as possible to help our community to do their bit to be more environmentally friendly, and hopefully save some money at the same time. Whether you think this is a good idea or not, please take a couple of minutes to complete this anonymous survey to let us know what you think. https://forms.office.com/r/0rq53S2esh

If you missed the “Nature Matters” film, or would like to watch it again, it is now available on YouTube https://youtu.be/XQu9WHsVp0s?si=e7A1EOSp4nXSUpBy

If you missed the talk from Sarah Corbett, you would like to know more about Craftivism or are interested in ordering her book for yourself visit the Craftivist Collective website https://craftivist-collective.com/our-story/  We hope to be able to bring you news of our own Craftivist creative workshop soon that more people will be able to take part in.

Did you have your photograph taken for the TAD’ah! project? The artwork is now complete, and it looks amazing!  There’s lots of faces on it that you will recognise including quite a few Tadcrafters. The great reveal will take place at 12 noon on 16th March at The Barn (where else!). It will be formally presented by the artist Chris Tipping, our North Yorkshire Councillor, Kirsty Poskitt, and North Yorkshire Councillor Simon Myers – Executive Member for Culture and Arts. Everyone in the community is welcome to attend from 12noon til 3pm to see the artwork and enjoy the hospitality of the Barn staff and volunteers! Please come along if you can, especially if you are on it, to represent Tadcrafters and the important place we have within the community. This is one of the many cultural activities that we are supporting to increase interest and participation in the arts in Tadcaster. Look out for more details on the Arts Centre Day at The Barn on Sunday 21st April in the next newsletter.

As you know, at Tadcrafters we would really love to have our own space and be able to offer more activities without having to lug materials and equipment around (to the detriment of our health!) This is part of the reason we are supporting a move to establish an Arts, Community and Well-being Centre in Tadcaster.  There are many forms this could take with lots of different types of service on offer, influenced by the choice and availability of the building that would contain them.  This is a long-term project and before anything can get started, we need to find out whether this is something the community would actually support.  There are lots of examples of activities that could be on offer, and we would welcome additional suggestions so please let us know your thoughts and help make it happen by filling this short, anonymous survey  https://forms.office.com/r/ZSuh1zcYEt

Please have a look at the calendar at the end of the newsletter for a summary of our future events.    

Community Connectors is a new initiative from Up For Yorkshire which aims to ensure that information about support and services is made available to as many people as possible, in particular the people who are not connected to the internet that you know or may talk to.  If you would like to search for services available locally you can search using Tribe – North Yorkshire’s community listing tool to help people easily find local activities, groups, services and support: https://tribeproject.org/

 TadCrafters Tadcaster Group Update

Despite the change of day due to the half term holiday we had a very decent turn out at the February drop-in session.  We’ll be back to normal for March.

The next Tadcrafters drop-in session will be Tuesday 12th March 10am-3pm

If you can’t wait that long for a crafting session you might like to join us to celebrate International Women’s Day (albeit a couple of days early) at the Yorkits workshop sessions on Tuesday 5th March. If you are able to come along your support would be very much appreciated.  You don’t need to be able to sew or take any equipment with you (but be prepared for arctic temperatures in there).  Please book on  https://yorkminster.org/whats-on/event/yorkits-workshop/.  There are lots of places but they do go quite quickly, especially for the morning session.

We are trialling a couple of new projects including little jewellery bags for patients at St. Leonard’s Hospice. We hope to be able to have kits ready for you to collect at the next drop-in session.

Please see the list of all current projects towards the end of the newsletter.

 Sherburn Crafters Update

We had a record number of attendees at our February meeting in Sherburn. Welcome to Suzanne, Emma and Linda. We busied ourselves making up Twiddlemuffs, threading ribbons for the new jewellery pouches and making up templates for the Yorkits event on 5th March. We chatted about all sorts, putting the world to rights. A very enjoyable two hours which flew by. One of our members has a contact for the Worry Monsters so we were able to pass on all the ready made ones, plus more kits. The Early Years team at North Yorkshire Council are finding their families really appreciate the little fellas.

We meet on the fourth Thursday each month at the Old Girls School and more or less follow the same projects as the Tadcaster drop-in.   You are welcome to attend both if you wish.  The dates are in the calendar below. Our next meeting is on Maundy Thursday, 28th March, 11am to 1pm at the Old Girls School. All most welcome- Karen

If you would like to join the group just turn up at the session and email tadcrafters@outlook.com to ask to be added to the Sherburn mailing list.

 TadGrafters Wood-working Group Update

The TadGrafters team have made lots of bat boxes for organisations working with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and are hoping to make more bat boxes and bee hotels for distribution locally over the next few sessions.

The Grafters are next due to meet on Wednesday 13th March 1.15-3.15pm at The Barn.  If you would like to help, or just come and see what the woodworkers do, just pop along to a session.  You don’t need to bring anything with you.

 Gardening Group update

It’s been quite some time since we last got together but now that spring seems to be on the horizon I thought it would be good to get a couple of dates in the diary.

Quaker Burial Ground – Saturday 2nd March at 10.00am. As you may have noticed, one of the trees at one of the entrances to the QBG has suffered a great deal of damage as half the tree sheared off in the high winds and has been lying on the ground in the top half. Most of the wood has been foraged in the last few weeks so only the remnants of twigs and small branches now remain. The plan is to clear those with normal gardening tools such as secateurs, loppers and small saws and make a woodpile to supplement the bug hotel.

Tadcaster Primary Academy – Sunday 24th March at 10.30am. A lot of our plans to visit TPA last year were thwarted by very wet weather, so hopefully we are in for a dry spell over the next few weeks so we will be able to get into the garden to do some tidying up- Sue

If you are not already a member of the gardening group and would like to get involved, please contact Sue T at tadcraftersst@outlook.com and contact tadcrafters@outlook.com to be put on the mailing list.

 Beekeeping Group Update

The bees (and the beekeeping group) will be keeping an eye on the weather during March to see whether it’s going to be warm enough for the bees to venture out. Even though there is pollen and nectar in some of the early flowers it may not be warm enough for the bees to come out so we may need to give them a bit of extra feed to keep them going. We won’t start regular checks until April, when the weather warms up (regularly over 16 degrees C).

Sara will be in touch with the group to get together so we can agree how we want to run the group again this year. During the season (April to end of September) we check the bees roughly once each week.  This mostly tends to be a Saturday late morning but we decide each week, depending on the weather.

This year we have a challenge to create a new colony to replace the one we lost last year. That’s going to be interesting as we have spent the last two years trying to prevent new colonies forming!

If you would like to join us, you don’t need any experience. We can give you some “on the job” training. Then, if you like it, we can suggest additional training. Two of us are members of Leeds Beekeepers and one of the group joined Barkston Ash Beekeepers, so we can pass on some of the knowledge we get for these groups.

If you would like more information contact us through the Tadcrafters email. tadcrafters@outlook.com

List of Current TadCrafters projects 

We welcome anyone new who would like to join us but ask you to please stick to our current projects as other items can be hard to find homes for. We need to focus on a few projects at a time so we can support everyone, maintain our standards and supply items that are wanted by worthy causes, in appropriate quantities.  Some items originally intended for one cause may be re-directed to another or find their way onto our tombola stall to help raise funds. We supply materials for free at our drop-in sessions and instructions are provided by email or by links, if provided below; if you need help, please ask!

Sewing– supplied in kit form at the drop-off sessions

  • Jewellery bags for St. Leonard’s Hospice
  • Personal effects bags for hospice patients and bereaved families at St. Leonard’s and St. Gemma’s Hospices
  • Syringe driver bags for hospitals and hospices
  • Drawstring book bags for the Banana box toy project
  • Liners, shields and drawstring bags for YorKits feminine hygiene kits
  • Heart-shaped cushions and drain bags for breast surgery patients (in sessions)
  • Draught excluders (in sessions)
  • Tombola items- miscellaneous kits

Knitting/crochet– yarn and needles available at the drop-off sessions

Other projects

  • If you can’t knit or sew there are non-sewing tasks such as threading drawstrings and decorating twiddlemuffs that are really useful to the team, please ask.
  • Picking-up/dropping-off donation or supplies for people who are unable to make the sessions. You could maybe team up with someone who cannot drive or has other commitments on session days.
  • Join our woodwork, gardening, or bee-keeping groups.
  • If you are interested in doing something positive to help tackle climate change, however small, follow the Sustainable Tadcaster Facebook page. Please get in touch if we can support you to kick-start a new initiative such as running a repair café, library of things, recycling or other circular economy scheme etc. and complete this short anonymous survey https://forms.office.com/r/0rq53S2esh

Wish list and other ways to help

  • A huge thank you to the many people who have donated many, many things to us and have kept us going. If you have some surplus that you would like donate to us please be aware that we are short of storage space so please try to stick as close as possible to our wish list, or speak to us first. Smaller donations can be made at The Barn, ideally at one of the Tuesday drop-in sessions. NB We cannot use worn, dirty or smoky clothes, fabric or yarn.  Fabric that is only fit for rags can be put directly into the collecting point outside the Salvation Army and save us a job. They, and Oxfam, have their own facilities to shred and recycle fabrics.  We welcome:
  • New or clean, nearly new polyester/cotton or other lightweight woven fabric
  • New or nearly new knitting yarn. Any colour or weight but double knitting would be great.
  • Items, especially hand-crafted ones, suitable for our tombola stalls
  • New or clean, nearly new winceyette (brushed cotton) sheets/fabric for Yorkits
  • Spectacles for Specsort who take them to people in  developing countries
  • “Gently worn” bras and new pants for “Smalls for All” http://smallsforall.org/
  • Vintage fabric, equipment and haberdashery *

*Any items not suitable or surplus to our own use we give or sell to people who really appreciate them, whilst also raising funds for our projects.

  • If you would like to make a financial donation/direct debit to help us do what we do you can do so on the Local Giving website which can be found at: https://localgiving.org/tadcrafters
  • Please share our social media posts and encourage others to join in.
  • Sign up to Easyfundraising to raise money for us at no extra cost to you when you shop online, https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/tadcrafterscic/
  • Visit our Etsy store to purchase top-quality fabric remnants that are surplus to our requirements https://www.etsy.com/shop/tadcrafters/      If you live in Tadcaster, contact us direct for a discount. NB these items are not stored at The Barn or available for viewing at sessions.
  • Support our campaign to find a place of our own. If you know of a local business that could provide us with sponsorship or free space that we could use to store goods and run workshops from please put them in touch with us, and fill in this survey https://forms.office.com/r/ZSuh1zcYEt

Keep in touch

If you need to get in touch with us, and need a response, please use email. This is to protect your personal details and because messages and conversations on social media become lost. Someone will get back to you, but it might not be straight away due to other commitments. The Tadcrafters Chat Group or Sherburn Tadcrafters Chat Group is a great way to keep in touch with other Tadcrafters and be inspired. You can also follow the Tadcrafters page, (and Tadcrafters Sales page) on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and Instagram (@Tadcrafters). 

To be put on the emailing list/s (wherever you live) please request it by emailing tadcrafters@outlook.com  and add us to your list of contacts so we don’t end up in your junk. There are usually only one or two emails a month.

If you would like to be kept up to date about any of the specific group activities please email us and ask to be put on the relevant group mailing list and your email will be forwarded to the group leader.

See you soon, Su.

Directors Tadcrafters CIC: Su Morgan, Lynne Howard Sandra Levitt and Sue Tennant