How I Started a Crochet & Knitting Club
And how you can start one, too!
I started a crochet and knitting club at my school without really knowing how to do anything from running meetings, advertising, or leading group projects. The club ended up with 40+ members, most of which were people who had never crocheted before. This post will go over all of the things that I learned along the way and how you can start your own club – whether it be in your school or community.
Getting it Started & Advertising
In order to get people interested in coming to the club meetings, you will have to advertise it somehow. If this is a club for school, putting an announcement up or hanging flyers around the school will work. If you are doing this in your community, try advertising through social media. Either way, make sure to talk about it with friends or anyone that you think would be interested in attending. To make flyers, I like to use Canva, but you can use whatever software you are comfortable with. Make sure to add all of the important information and some way for people to contact you if they have any questions.
Purchasing Supplies
A great incentive for people to just stop by your club just to learn a little about crochet or knit is to supply materials for them to use. This is great for beginners who haven’t bought themselves supplies yet. If you don’t want to spend too much money, ask current members of your club or people who you know if they have any extra hooks, needles, or yarn that they could donate to the club. I would also recommend buying a bulk pack of crochet hooks or knitting needles in a standard size. If your club is at a school or if you have a lot of people who are new to crochet or knit, this can be very helpful to them.
Running Meetings
The crochet and knitting club that I started was centered around teaching people how to crochet. You can either do this or simply have meetings where people can come in and chat while they crochet or knit. Either way, it is best if you start off with some sort of structure. For my meetings, we would do a little introduction at the beginning for any new members to go over how the meetings work (where supplies are, any current projects, etc.). Then, we would typically go right into crocheting and knitting! When teaching people how to crochet or knit, depending on how many people there are, you can either demonstrate to a large group of people or walk around the room to give every person individual instructions, which is what I found to be the most beneficial for everyone as long as there weren’t too many people who were new to crochet.
Another option to run meetings a little differently is to have a short lesson before everyone starts to work. This can also be beneficial to people just starting out. Examples include reading yarn labels, types of yarn, etc. I found it easiest to make a quick slideshow to go over these.
Community Service Projects
My favorite part of my crochet and knitting club was the community service projects that we did! This is a great way to both encourage involvement in your club and to help out the community. We did two projects. One was to crochet or knit pumpkins for a nursing home, and the other one was to crochet hygiene products for a local organization. For more ideas on projects like these, visit my blog post about Helping the Community with Your Hobbies!
I hope that this post was helpful for you and inspires you to start a club of your own!