70s needlepoint takes my breath away! // LIBRARY DAY # 3

[@carolynd6610]

You are a beautiful person. I loved to watch your excitement for needlepoint; you have made my afternoon. Now I'm off to work on a baby quilt😀

[@retrocraftdreams]

Thank you! And, yay! One of these days I'll feel sorted enough to start a quilt!

[@kaytiej8311]

Just love Library Day. Entertainment, information and inspiration. Looking forward to having an intro "needlepoint explained".

[@retrocraftdreams]

I'm so happy you enjoy it! It's also a nod to my grandma, who wasn't a crafter, but LOVED her libraries. I'm going to go start working on a needlepoint primer, of sorts.

[@littlelola3147]

i don't know how you don't have more followers! as a gen z/millennial cusper (i'll be 28 this year) i'm old enough to have grown up seeing a lot of these retro designs decorating ppl's houses but young enough that i never really saw ppl making them. a lot of these crafts' finished pieces have a somewhat nostalgic factor for me as a young young kid, but they still seem foreign and new to me enough to be mind blowing. having said that, i know a lot of ppl my age and especially gen z'ers are getting into crafting as a side effect of being stuck inside during the pandemic (which i think is great! having gotten interested in crafting after the pandemic myself, im so happy crafting has gotten more popular w the younger adults of today so these crafts don't have to "die" or become "lost") but most of the popular crafting content creators are making content about very modernized crafts (i'll personally never get tired of sanrio/hello kitty knitting/crochet graphs/diagrams, but it's not like we will be at risk of a shortage of them any time soon) so i feel like your content is so fresh and niche and valuable. there are plenty of older crafting styles i'd like to see modernized (i literally googled trying to find if anyone has tried a sanrio/hello kitty/my melody etc design with bobbin lace lol) (your content taught me about "filet crochet" and when i googled that i found plenty of modernized designs/projects for filet crochet, including some sanrio ones lol) but i feel like there SHOULD be a bigger market for retro designs/projects for crafting practices that are popular among ppl my age. anyway i just rambled a bunch of nonsense but my point is i'm surprised you dont yet have a larger platform. im sure in time as you stick to this, crafters my age and a little younger will make a trend of retro crafting and you'll blow up as youre a great resource for that interest. :)

[@retrocraftdreams]

Thank you so much! I do have trouble finding other content like mine (although there are a few that do sewing, knitting, and crochet from early to mid-1900s, and plenty of historical & vintage sewists), and I think, while it's great to be unique, it means youtube doesn't know who to show my videos to. So I always knew it was going to be slow going here. Most crafters want to watch channels specific to their craft. But I feel like I'm going for the kind of people who used to watch Bob Ross to relax and had no intention of ever painting themselves, as well as those who love to explore new crafts and enjoy the nostalgia of this period. I know y'all are out there! When I feel in doubt, I tell myself, "if I build it, they will come." Your comment is proof of that, so thank you!

[@littlelola3147]

(I did a LOT of rambling here so I don't blame you if you don't want to read this entire thing. I would say if you read just the first and final paragragh that's the most important parts of my comment. Lmao.) Yeah you're right about the early 1900's stuff. There's definitely already quite a few content creators who make a lot of content about suuuuper vintage crafts. (Is "vintage" the right word? Is 150 years too old to be classified as vintage?) But it feels like those crafters are pretty much sticking to stuff from the early 1900's or even older like you said. You're right that crafters tend to watch content about their own craft, but I think a lot of people do watch content of crafts they don't personally do! I don't crochet because I literally can't even figure out how to do a double crochet and I doubt I'll attempt it again (it's been a lot of failures) but I love watching crochet videos/tutorials! In all fairness, I am learning to machine knit so I guess crochet content can still be valuable to my knitting journey, but I do watch a lot of other crafts I don't do- some I would like to learn one day, and others I doubt I ever will do. Like I watch resin jewelry/art, polymer clay, crochet, shuttle tatting (I'm also trying to learn to needle tat so I guess that doesn't exactly count as a craft I don't do), various types of embroidery or needlework, punch needle, sewing... If I could actually afford to get a full degree and not have to care about hire-ability afterwards I'd go to fashion school. :') @@retrocraftdreams I'm very fascinated with lacemaking too. Lace is so beautiful, but I'm interested in it from a sociological/cultural frame as well. Lace and similar crafts were so expensive and sought after by the super rich, yet lacemakers were often poor and usually women. At some point in historical England, it was literally illegal for people who weren't elitely rich/nobble etc to wear lace or whitework- even if they themselves made it! Lacemaking was so lucrative that it was vital to the economy of many cities/countries and at another point Venice made it illegal for Venetian lacemakers to move away and make lace or teach the craft for other countries. (Plus Irish crochet lace basically kept food on the table for many families during the Potato Famine.) Despite this lacemakers were usually in deep poverty, and as poor women they would work 15ish hour days in a factory regularly or if they did their craft from home, they would spend hours upon hours making lace whilst trying to raise children or maintain their domestic duties. Sadder still, often girls in poor families would learn lacemaking at a very young age and have to spend hours a day making lace even as a young kid. :'( Finally, it became a stereotype that lacemakers were often driven to insanity as a serious number of records of patients in mental hospitals were listed as lacemakers. Having gone on that unnecessary tangent, there are so many various crafts of lacemaking I doubt I could even learn half of them. But I love to see the various crafts in action. I actually did buy a bobbin lace kit but I'm a bit of a collector of craft supplies. It would be really neat to start a specific collection of historical lacemaking tools. Maybe I can make my own youtube channel about it lol. Anyway, when I bought the kit I just wanted to have one. I'm super adhd so I don't know if such a slowgoing craft is for me. However there aren't exactly many lacemaking crafts known for being quick lmao. But I could watch lacemaking videos all day! Anyway I bet the type of people you're talking about who like to watch different crafts even if they don't do them are more abundant than you think! I've heard that with KZbin you have to make very consistent content for a LONG time before you really take off. I've also heard that if you make a lot of shorts as well that that can help, although that still takes a whiiiiiile too. Do you think you could make shortform content like that? You could make tiktoks and IG/FB reels to promote your KZbin channel those places. Hell I bet if you could afford to, paying YT for your videos to be promoted might be smart. I've heard that quite a few successful KZbinrs did that to grow their platform faster and it can really work.

[@littlelola3147]

OH AND BTW have you heard of the K-tel Knitter? I mentioned I just can't seem to figure out crocheting but the K-tell Knitter is a tool that has an open loop instead of a hook and you can make crochet stitches (and thus crochet projects) with it. It's a retro crafting instrument that was popular in the (I believe) 80's? (Maybe it was the 70's or 90's but you get the point.) They're kind of hard to get your hands on sometimes but if you haven't you should get one and do some videos on it! I'd love to watch that.@@retrocraftdreams I found a modern version of it called a "loop crochet" tool and I find it a lot easier to use so I may actually start crocheting with that tool. Sadly it only seems to be one size but I know there's another brand called Fauxchet that I think is bigger? I believe there are two sizes of the K-tel Knitter so if I could get my hands on the larger one one day that would be helpful too. Sadly though there isn't much content on how to use loop/fauxchet tools beyond people just being like "omg, I got one and I'm gonna play around with it in just this one video and never mention it again" so I pretty much have to stick to the extremely limited number of actual tutorials on using them and the written instruction booklet that came with mine which sucks because I'm this weird cross between visual and kinesthetic learner where video tutorials (or demonstrations) really seem to be the best way for me to learn things. 😢

[@retrocraftdreams]

​@@littlelola3147 I know folks who like to watch crafts they don't (currently) do HAVE GOT to be plentiful, because I'm one of them, and I know I'm not THAT unique! "Vintage" isn't technically incorrect for something 150 years old, but over 100 years it is officially "antique," so that's the better term, although many of those creators are less about it being antique and more about the specific periods of Victorian, Edwardian, Reconstruction, etc. It is one of my goals to improve on social media this year to help boost visibility of this channel. (One I am already failing at.) I particularly struggle with short form, though, because it's not something I personally enjoy watching. So it's hard to know what people are looking for in it and what those videos should consist of, plus it can be a lot of extra work. But I do plan on at least doing shorts of the different stitches and such when I get into my sampler. And there's a couple others I've planned, but I can't put them out until the project videos they go with are done.

[@retrocraftdreams]

@@littlelola3147 I have, actually, and I waited a long time for an affordable listing to come up! I can't recall the exact year, but they're very late 60s/early 70s. So I've got one size, plus a booklet. (I don't actually know which size I have, but it can work with worsted weight.) I actually filmed a whole video with it and two other gadgets last summer, but the footage was just... not very enjoyable. I do plan to try again, but probably just one gadget at a time, with better lighting and when I'm not in a rush. I'm definitely always on the lookout for crazy vintage craft gadgets and want to make them a whole series. Though, I sense none will become regular crafts for me.