friends forever fiveest uq snoi fosffs r al—inmu and small business owners with an environmentally conscious mission— emma chongo & quin chaiken hamilton ‘19 For Quin and Emma, the pandemic provided an opportunity to start an exciting and sustainable collective with a close group of longtime friends (including fellow Class of 2019 members Micah Brown, n ika Peterson, and ila Peterson). These artisans give found materials new life and themselves a meaningful creative outlet with eir beautiful designs.
1) How did Meyer Lemon Crafts start? Who is involved and what does the business do? Meyer Lemon Crafts started in 2021, when I (Quin) taught myself to crochet, knit, and sew during the pandemic and fell in love with crafting. I started sharing my crafts on Instagram and with friends, and was encouraged by several people to sell them. In October, I reached out to my friends to see if anyone wanted to join me, and signed up for a booth at a market hosted by Sunset Mercantile with fellow SFFS alumni Micah Brown and Annika Peterson. We became a small craft collective and named ourselves Meyer Lemon Crafts.
Since then we have sold at three in-person markets, grown to eight members from different schools (including SFFS alumni Emma Chongo and Aila Peterson), and launched a website. From the very beginning we committed to using only second-hand, recycled, or scrap materials in an effort to be sustainable and save materials from going to waste. We love turning unwanted items into new and exciting products with a wide variety of crafts, including crochet, knitting, tie-dye, sewing, jewelry-making and book folding. Some of our most popular products are crochet sheep hats, knit strawberry beanies, and geode tie-dye T-shirts. –––––––––
2) What inspired you and your friends to launch Meyer Lemon Crafts? What’s the mission of the business? We are all very creative people and saw this as a great opportunity to turn our hobbies into something unique and exciting. We had so much fun at the very first market, connecting with people in the community and seeing people’s joyful reactions, and we wanted to keep doing it. Our vision is to generate joy, creativity, sustainable action, and camaraderie through crafts, and we’re doing that by creating a collective of artists who create sustainably and support and inspire each other. The communi-
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