Dear Craft Friends and Trinket Enthusiasts: This is your invitation to Twinkie Chan's Bag Charm Party, a colorful and playful place to learn how to make 25 adorable bag charms with a gigantic assortment of materials. Charms are a whimsical way to express your personality, feel a little bit fancy, and celebrate the stuff you love, for people all ages and all styles. They're fun to trade, a blast to make with friends, and your everyday bag or purse will truly become one-of-a-kind. This multifaceted class is both a bag charm bonanza and an adventure through many crafts. Twinkie - a longtime treasure-collector and designer of imaginative accessories - shows you how to make bag charms out of beads, paracord, chain, tiny toys, Shrinky Dinks, Perler beads, polymer clay, hot glue, and more. If you're already experienced in a particular craft, this is your moment to shine and make an amazing charm with it. If you're trying one of these crafts for the first time, it's a no-pressure opportunity to experiment and play, because even the weirdest charms are fabulous. What kinds of textures, colors, and tiny knickknacks are you drawn to right now, and what will your bag charms look like?

Find the crochet Teddy Bear Bag Charm Pattern here. 

Learn to breathe into your stitches and approach each row with curiosity as author and yogi Liza Laird immerses you in the art of mindful knitting. This uniquely asymmetrical design blends lusciously squishy brioche with smooth garter stitches, resulting in a cozy mat with a mitered knit edge perfect for meditation or yoga practice. The pattern includes both a meditation mat size and full yoga mat size which can also be used as a chunky wrap scarf or small blanket. Practice knitting techniques like garter stitch, purling, brioche stitch with increases and decreases, and incorporating breathing techniques to enhance focus and relaxation.

Note: Liza makes a small sample size in class that is 8" x 6". The meditation mat size is about 25" x 29" and the yoga mat size is about 25" x 58". Work the yoga mat size by doing more rows. 

Check out Liza's other classes for more yoga and yarn!

A well-fitting jumpsuit is a wardrobe staple, and it's even better when it’s made just for you. In this class, designer and sewist Sanae Ishida builds on her foundational pattern drafting series to show you how to draft and sew a button-down jumpsuit using your own measurements. The result is a custom-fit garment that fits like a dream. Jumpsuits are effortlessly stylish and versatile, making them one of the easiest all-in-one outfits you can wear. Use this class to create a truly personalized wardrobe.

Please watch Sanae's torso and lower body slopers classes before making this awesome jumpsuit!

Julia Child famously said, "With enough butter, anything is good”, and we couldn’t agree more. In this class, Cobrina makes it easy to create homemade sweet cream butter without the tiring “shake-it-in-a-jar” method. She’ll show you a quick, foolproof technique using a machine to churn heavy cream into rich butterfat and fresh buttermilk. From there, you’ll learn how to customize your butter with just the right amount of salt, or experiment with fun, unexpected flavors. While it may not be faster or cheaper than store-bought, the taste and wow factor are unmatched. Whether you’re spreading it on fresh bread or adding it to your favorite dishes, this butter is sure to steal the show.

For more creative ways to flavor and serve butter check out Days 8-10 of Cobrina's From My Kitchen To Yours Daily Practice class.

If you're a crocheter, everyone you know likely expects you to make sweaters, scarves, and blankets for the holiday season. But crochet designer Twinkie Chan knows that you don’t need another big project on your to-do list. Twinkie's gift for you is this daily practice filled with 20 of the cutest holiday-themed appliqués. They don't take a lot of time or yarn but still have tremendously cozy holiday vibes. Each one fits in the palm of your hand, and you can use them to make ornaments, brooches, gift toppers, or garlands. You can put them on stockings, sweaters, and basically anything you can think of. Try one or try them all. Deck out one gift or deck the hall. Happy holidays!

The granny square sweater is a staple of the crochet world. It’s iconic, it gives the coziest vibes, and it’s approachable for all levels of crocheters. Once you know how to crochet granny squares, turning them into a cardigan is a snap. In this class, crochet designer and author Twinkie Chan teaches you how to crochet a comfy, oversized granny square cardigan that feels like taking your favorite blanket with you everywhere you go. Begin by learning the basic granny square, which is made of double crochet stitches and chains. Then you'll learn two different ways to invisibly connect your squares - the "Join As You Go" method and the mattress stitch – and how to assemble panels of squares into a cardigan. You’ll finish with ribbing on the cuffs and hem. Twinkie designed this cardigan to be long, loose, and slouchy, but the pattern and process are so versatile that you can easily make your cardigan shorter or smaller. You can leave the sleeves free and uncuffed, and you can even swap in any kind of crocheted square that you like.

When you are a creative person but you feel like you can't access that part of yourself, how do you re-engage with your creativity and keep it going? At one time or another all of us experience lulls in our creativity and reconnecting when you feel blocked can be challenging, but artist, author and Creativebug Editor-in-Chief, Courtney Cerruti, is here to share her tried and true approaches in sparking and sustaining creative practice. Start with small steps: make space for new experiences, embrace playful practices, and engage with inspiring books and people. Courtney's prompts overlap and spill into each other—take them as they are or adapt them to fit your style as they ignite your creativity, slowly building into a fully fueled fire of artistic thought and action. Remember that creativity is a journey, and each person's path to reconnection is unique.

 

Beautify your balcony and illuminate your living room with colorful, crocheted hanging lanterns. Crochet designer and author Twinkie Chan shows you how to create two different stylesof this vintage-inspired home decor. The first one has a simple cylindrical shape, and you’ll learn a latticed shell stitch that’s worked in double crochets and chains. The second one has a chandelier shape and is for adventurous crocheters interested in exploring a variety of stitch patterns like granny stitches, the upside down granny stitch, popcorns, and Twinkie's version of the flower of life which contains double treble, triple treble and even quadruple treble stitches. This class is a fun opportunity to experiment with structure and how a soft crochet fabric can drape and stretch over a rigid frame. Whether you hang your lanterns in your home or outside in your garden, they will brighten your space every day.

Take your custom front torso sloper from Sanae Ishida’s foundational class and turn it into a beautifully fitted, sleeveless tiered dress. Beloved instructor and pattern maker Sanae guides you through each step, from transforming your sloper into a dress bodice to gathering the skirt, adding pockets, and customizing details like shoulder width and number of tiers. It's a perfect project for practicing precision while embracing creativity and personal style.

There’s something so joyful about cake! Work with cake and crochet enthusiast, Twinkie Chan, on a month-long crocheted cake extravaganza. You'll learn how to cover three shapes of cake: square, round and a slice, then practice many different kinds of decorative frostings that look like fancy buttercream piping. You'll also learn how to crochet cherries, berries, flowers, leaves, and birthday candles. Add some fun faux food embellishments for a suites of crochet sweets! With this robust recipe book of sweet embellishments and techniques, you’ll be able to mix and match you way to an endless number of one-of-a-kind cake designs, perfect for all of your special events and favorite people. Have your cake and keep it too!

Need to brush up on your crochet stitches and techniques before embarking on this cake class? No problem! Watch Twinkie's Crochet Sampler: A Daily Practice first. 

Want to learn how to turn your cake into a keepsake box for gifting? Check out Twinkie's bog post here. 

Crochet designer and author Twinkie Chan shows you two easy ways to turn a hank of yarn into a center-pull ball. While most yarns from big craft stores come in skeins—ready to use with a convenient yarn tail—many yarns from local shops are sold in hanks. A hank is a large loop of yarn twisted into itself, and if you try to work directly from it, you'll quickly end up with a tangled mess. That’s why learning to wind your own center-pull ball is a must. Twinkie walks you through the process with and without a yarn swift and ball winder, so you're covered either way.

There is a whole world of granny squares out there with fun shapes like fruits and veggies and animals inside them. Crochet a super cute strawberry granny square with crochet designer Twinkie Chan. Learn how to create a strawberry shape in rows and how to build a granny square around it. Then, top the strawberry with a row of leaves and stitch on the seeds. In this little five-inch square you’ll get to practice crochet stitches of many heights, from single crochet up to treble crochet, and you’ll have the sweetest addition to your granny square collection.

Add a few to a Granny Square Cardigan!