Craft Loft (Cambridge Store) — Local services in Cambridge

The store itself has quite a few gems and the energy is great, but I am most excited by the classes. I went to rug tufting last week after over a year of wanting to learn the skill, and it was everything I hoped for and more. I appreciated that we had total creative freedom over our designs, no matter how ambitious. I chose the largest size (36x36) and it was a fun and rewarding workout! Plan to make this the main activity in the day if you book a tufting class. My design took about 7 hours, so I imagine the smallest size would be about 2 or 3, and you can't rush art. The instructor Jen was great: knowledgeable, friendly, provided a safe environment, and had some flexibility with me coming back another day to finish my piece. I will definitely make another rug here!

Some first time tufting tips: -It takes some arm strength, be prepared! -You can take breaks to walk around and get a snack in the mall if you need to. -There are lots of acrylic yarn colors available, including different shades of each color. -You can choose to make a wall hanging or a rug to put on the floor. -A good activity to do solo or with friends! Would probably be fun for families but not with young kids because you do need to be strong enough to hold the equipment for long...

I really liked the experience of making custom dice with my friends. I left wanting to come back and do another workshop! Unfortunately, I was kind of upset with how some things turned out. They told us to put what color we wanted the numbers to be on our paper slips. We were not made aware that the number painting on the dice costs an extra $25 on top of the $50 you’re spending for the experience until AFTER they painted the numbers on. If we knew that, we would have declined. But at that point we had no choice but to pay for it. The $10 delivery charge is written on the slip, but the number painting charge was not. No one in my party remembered them mentioning it was an extra charge. Additionally, they mentioned that the best way to get any holes out was to use a blow torch, but they didnt have that so they said if you mix it well it would be fine. They said mine was mixed well to get any bubbles out, but of course the tops of my dice have tons of bubbles. I was willing to pay the $50 to have the experience of making my own dice, but the product was not worth a total $75 and the sneakiness with which they made us pay an additional fee was not...

I took beginner sewing (PJ shorts) with Jen. The class was super informative and a good way to learn basics about sewing. However, I have a few suggestions as to how these classes could be better. First, we used concepts we were taught, but they weren't exactly defined -- I wish we would have learned things like "a seam allowance is..." and "a pattern is..." instead of just working with them and having to infer. Second, I've been reading about sewing, and there seems to be a ton of important concepts to learn. It would be really nice if the classes were clearer about which they covered. For instance, we learned to use the sewing machine, but not how to set it up -- we didn't learn to thread it, or what the different stitches are and when to use them. We didn't learn anything about measuring, marking, ironing, etc. We did some pinning but I wish the instructions had been more precise because I don't feel like I totally understood what was going on. I can imagine a master list of skills to learn for sewing with a guide of which class covers which skills, and I think that would be...