Bernadette Noll - Make Stuff Together

The Future Craft Collective Taps Kids' Innate Creativity

For Bernadette Noll, it's always been second nature to grab whatever's on hand and transform it into something new. "I call myself an improvisational seamstress," she laughs. "I was never really interested in using patterns. I like to make stuff up as I go along."

Bernadette's knack for improvisation has become a core theme in her life and career. Writer, crafter, mother of four, she's also co-founder of the Future Craft Collective in Austin, Texas. Spawned from a kitchen-table conversation with a friend, it's an organization whose simple motto, "Make Stuff Together," has become a rallying cry for the burgeoning upcycling and DIY movements, a model for new ways families can spend time with each other — and the title of her soon-to-be-published book of the same name.

Why Consume When You Can Create?

Bernadette recalls the evolution of the idea: "As fellow moms, my friend and I were seeing how our children were being bombarded with messages to consume, consume, consume," she says. "But we were both creative types, and we wanted our kids to get on board. We started by offering ‘sustainable sewing' classes to the community, using materials that we had lying around, or that we could get our hands on easily, for free. We wanted kids to understand that creating something — becoming a fabric dyer or seamstress or crafter — didn't necessarily mean spending a hundred bucks on materials. That you could do it with just what's around you."

Her introduction to Rit Dye came when her husband, a carpenter, "built these beautiful bunk beds for our kids' rooms. We were looking around for stain colors that would really make the wood pop. But we couldn't find a traditional stain that was vibrant enough. So we experimented with liquid Rit Dye, painted it onto the wood, and then covered it with polyurethane. And 10 years later, that blue is still vibrantly blue, the ladders are a dazzling red, the colors are still amazingly eye-popping. It's beautiful, and it's really withstood the test of time."

Crafting A Community

Today, the Future Craft Collective offers multiple classes and events in the Austin area; a regularly-updated blog full of projects, suggestions, and web-based conversations — and a special relationship with communities both in Austin and online.

"A beautiful side effect of seeking out used materials is that we've actually expanded our community. So we've now bonded with a bunch of people in town that we wouldn't have otherwise. Local coffee roasters who are overjoyed to get rid of their burlap sacks. Local upholsterers who have end rolls of fabrics they can't use. We've made a real connection with these folks; we count on them and they count on us."

Similarly, the collective's online efforts build a different kind of community. "With our web site and our blog, we're communicating with this national population of people doing similar stuff. And what begins virtually can, little by little, grow into a real connection. You put an idea out there, some project, and you get this incredible feedback from somebody, maybe some mom in some little town in Oklahoma, who otherwise wouldn't have access to this larger group. She's able to tap into the creative craft community in Brooklyn and Austin and Seattle. It really can expand people's horizons."

Focusing on Family and Friends

For her upcoming book, Bernadette is busy coming up with dozens of new projects themed around family life — "so each project will be more than something that you make together, but something that leads towards greater connection, as well. The section on family dinners includes a beautiful dyed table runner, napkins and napkin rings. There's a whole chapter called ‘Fun and Games' with things like a homemade beanbag toss and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. It's all about transforming ‘hanging out' into something a bit more creative — and therefore more satisfying — for everyone.

"My daughter is 12, and she and her close friend have recently realized that they don't want to use the term ‘play date' any more for the time they spend together. Yet they don't want to just ‘hang out' — because there's too much pressure in the open-endedness of that. So they decided that they're going to get together for ‘craft-outs.' And they love it. It gives them a focus for their time. The other day they made this beautiful strip quilt, just using little scraps of cloth that they found and piecing them all together. That age group, if we allow them the room to create, they will amaze us.

"What it all comes down to is this: If you put a bunch of kids in a room with some dye and fabric and sewing materials, they'll always come up with something phenomenal. Because you're really teaching them to think about their own creativity."