Sometimes I make things for clients. Sometimes I make them for myself, my family or dear friends. Every now and then I make things for people I don’t know very well but who have been an important part of our daughter’s life, like a teacher of some kind. This last category is the hardest because I only know the recipient in a limited context and know nothing about their home or their aesthetic sensibilities.

Such was my frame of mind when I volunteered to make the class gift for our daughter’s preschool teachers this year and when I volunteered to make a farewell gift for my daughter’s gymnastics instructor of the past two years.

The designs needed to fulfill the following criteria: they had to include the children in some way, had to be designed in such a way that they could be used in the teacher’s house (a classic design that could work in either a traditional or contemporary home), had to be washable and dryable, had to be very simple in design, had to not require me to buy any new fabric and had to be nice but not be too ambitious. Perhaps more importantly, I thought, it needed to be a class quilt. Not a FunQuilts quilt, not a Weeks quilt. It was a gift from the families to the teachers. It was about the kids and the teacher not about my design ego.

In each case I asked another teacher the color of each of the teachers’ living rooms. Then we found a simple white fabric upon which the children could write their names or draw pictures of themselves with a Sakura Identipen in an analogous color. These pens are permanent and will make the quilt able to be machine washed and dried and best of all they have a thick point that kids can’t bend or break.

No big design statement. Just a simple, sweet reminder of the class and the implied statement that I took my time and talent to say thank you for being a positive presence in my child’s life for a bit. And if the recipient gets that when they open the quilt up, then what colors I chose and how I quilted it doesn’t much matter.

What with youtube exploding as the new hot thing on the internets, it’s only a matter of time before video tutorials are all over the place. Even now there are some great video tutorials out there, which is really helpful, particularly for some crafts like knitting, which can be very difficult to understand from a written description of a stitch or an illustration. Nothing beats being able to visually see something done so that you can repeat it yourself. Here are some of the craft-related videos I’ve managed to round up:

Pink of Perfection - queen of them all, this blog feature video tutorials on cooking, sewing, knitting and all kinds of other projects
Crafty girls podcast - from the oxygen network, how-tos for ‘stylish knit-wear and dazzling jewelry’ (via Kraf-O-La )
Annie’s Attic - Knitting, Crochet, Cross-Stitch and Plastic Canvas stitch guides
Next Stitch Crochet videos
Art of Stained Glass
Candlemaking
Scrapbooking Answers video podcast
Switchboards Podcast - not technically a tutorial, but about handmade goods
Hello Knitty
KnittingHelp.com
CommonThreads Online classes

I’m sure there are lots more too, feel free to suggest your favorites in the comments!