Clemency Green interview for Craft It Yourself

14 July 2017

 

Your new series is Craft it Yourself. What’s it all about?

It’s about using craft to tap into various interior trends to make over sad, unloved rooms. We’ve all got a room that’s a bit miserable; maybe it’s a walkway or a dumping ground. This is about loving those rooms and making things yourself to go in them. You make things with your own two hands, and that gives you that amazing feeling of satisfaction that you’ve managed to transform something, to create something unique and exciting.

 

What kind of crafts do you do on the show?

We really do cover the whole craft spectrum, from welding and metalwork and leather and things like that, right through to the stitching and felting and needlework, and everything in between. There really is something for everyone. Some if it’s harder than others, some of it you could learn in five minutes. Some of it you need proper equipment to do others you can just raid what’s in your kitchen cupboard and do it.

 

This is a show designed for people to go out and do it themselves, isn’t it? It’s just not a room-makeover show; it’s a lot more than that.

Yeah, the makeover of the room is the bonus, because you get to see all the crafts in there, and it gives us a theme to work with, so all the crafts kind of follow a theme in each episode. But it’s much more than just a room makeover show, because it’s teaching you each individual craft, some of which are easy and some of which are quite bloody hard.

 

Do you and your co-hosts each bring your own specific skills to proceedings?

Oh yeah, definitely. They laugh at me, because I’m the kind of interior trend girl, so every time they speak to me now, they’re like “Hey Clem, what’s hot right now?” But I’m really into all of that, interiors and trends and Pinterest and Instagram – that’s my kind of world. But also I do a lot of baking, I am very hands-on creative, so I’ve always being into trying new skills and turning my hand to whatever I’m let loose on. Robin [Johnson] is the wood whisperer – he’s an amazing craftsman who makes these beautiful bespoke bits of furniture, so he’s really good at all of the wood side of things. Although we did get him doing things like cross-stitch, so everyone had to try a bit of everything. And Ant [Anstead]’s trade is cars, beautiful car restoration, but he’s a tech and power-tool guru.

 

Did you have to teach yourself a lot of the skills involved, or did you already know most of it?

Oh yeah – there’s a mixture of skills that we kind of knew and then taught ourselves a bit more, and then other things that we had no idea what we were doing, and got taught by some really incredible experts. I did origami, which I’d done a little bit of before, I’d made some swans and cranes and so on, and I met this lady Esther, who taught me how to do these beautiful origami sculptures. So along the way, we met a lot of passionate, clued-up people, experts in their field, and we got to try a lot of crafts that way, which was what was great about it. We got to do the things we know and love, and also learn a load of new things, which means people, can learn along with us.

 

Craft is very fashionable at the moment. Why do you think it’s made such a comeback?

I think it’s become fashionable because people really like the idea of having things that are bespoke to them, having something unique. I think the world is such a crazy, fast-moving place, with information coming at you from every direction, it’s a really lovely thing to just sit down and create something using your hands, not scrolling down your phone or rushing around at a million miles an hour. The image of the granny sitting doing crochet has changed. I mean, it’s still there, but that granny’s cool now. One of the things I like about it is that it does span generations, there’s something for everyone, and everyone can get involved with it.

 

And it’s a good way of saving money?

Yeah, it can be. Don’t be fooled, sometimes it’s not cheap. Ant and I made this gorgeous table, and Ant reckoned if you were to try and buy it in a shop it would be £10,000. But it still cost us a fair amount – if you’re going to make something beautiful, there’s no point in shortcutting it. Having said that, making a kitchen table is down the other end from doing some crochet. It is worth spending money on certain things, and if you spend some money on buying some knitting needles and beautiful wool, and you make something for someone, it’s worth twenty times to them what it would be if you’d just bought it.

 

How much time do you devote to craft?

Quite a weird amount of time. Craft and DIY and interiors all put together – I’m kind of obsessed with doing up my house – as soon as I stop doing one room I’ll move on to the next one, and when I’ve done them all, I do it all over again. And I’m constantly collecting things to go in there. A lot of my craft that I do is cake-making and cooking. I probably bake a big, extravagant cake once a week, and I like that, because it’s so hands-on, and I love doing that creative stuff. I‘m always up for trying different things. There are so many courses and different things you can learn, and there are so many great craft shops now, and there’s inspiration everywhere. So I’d say I devote quite a lot of time to craft.

 

How did you get on working with Ant and Robin?

I really had a lot of fun with them. I get on really well with them, it’s really fun hanging out with them. And there’s quite a strong competitive element between us as well, in terms of who’s made the best thing, or who gets to do the coolest thing every week.

 

Ant’s known for programmes about cars. Isn’t he a bit of a fish out of water with all these fancy crafts?

Well, he restores these beautiful cars, including the interiors. I’ve seen him do leather work on cars, and really fine detail, as well as fiddling with the mechanics of everything. He w3as no more a fish out of water than we all were at some points, and I think that was the beauty of it – learning something that you wouldn’t usually do.

 

What about Robin. Has he done TV before?

No, he hasn’t, actually. He runs a company which makes lovely bespoke furniture and builds fancy outhouses, and he’s done a bit of set design and so on. But he’s great on the show, and we all rally enjoyed working together.

 

Are there any aspects of craft that you hate? Were there any jobs that you just couldn’t wait to get to the end of in the series?

Oh, I made some silk pyjamas; it was like a day of hell. Silk is so difficult to work with. I’ve worked on a sewing machine before, and I’d made quite a simple pattern for pyjama bottoms. You watch the YouTube tutorials and they looked very easy. I came to make these silk pyjamas, and when held them up, they came up to my shoulders. I don’t know what went wrong. The material slips all over the place. And it’s so expensive; you don’t want to muck it up. It sound ridiculous, but for a craft it was intense pressure.

 

Did you do anything in the show that went so catastrophically wrong you decided you couldn’t use it?

No, we used everything. The pyjamas were the thing that did go catastrophically wrong, and we kept it all in there. Because that’s the point, things don’t always go completely to plan. You try, you fail, you correct it – it’s all about learning. We never wanted this to be a really polished “here’s one I made earlier” kind of show. This is about watching someone learn, and seeing the pitfalls, because that’s how you get good at things.

 

Some of these creations are fairly labour intensive, aren’t they?

Yeah. We made a woven bench, for example, which was really labour intensive. Robin and I had a fun day, and ended up with rope burns all over our hands from pulling these cables. Yeah, some things take longer than others. But it’s all enjoyable – you’re doing it because you love making things, so it’s the process just as much as the result that you’re into. But we made sure there was a good mix of things. Some things you really could do quickly. Like, we did these tie-dye cushions, which looked brilliant in the end, but they took a couple of minutes, and then you wash them and they’re done, and you get an impact from the result. So there’s a variety of things. Some things just do take longer than other things, but as long as you enjoy the process you don’t mind about that.

 

What was the coolest thing you did during the series?

I really loved making a knife. That was really cool, because it was in there, and it was in the heat, and you were banging things, and it was metalwork, and I hadn’t done anything like that before. So that was really exciting seeing that come together. And there was something primitive and amazing about making a knife. Watching it come together, and then whittling the handle as well. It was really therapeutic. And you can go on courses to do it. The next one I’m going on is the axe-making course.

 

What are you going to do with an axe?

I’m going to hang it on my wall and sit and look at it.

 

This really is about getting people to make things themselves, isn’t it? You really make it easy for people?

Yeah, we explain where to get the materials, how long it will take, and how difficult it is. I think it’s really important. If you’re going to watch something like that, you want to know that you can do it yourself, and you want to know how much time and how much money you’ll have to invest in it. It’s encouraging people to get involved, and that’s the whole point of the show. There’s something for everyone. It’s all really accessible.

 

Is there anything you made in the series that you’ve incorporated into your home?

I made this amazing giant knitted blanket. The yarn isn’t like normal yarn, it’s a huge ball of really chunky fat yarn, and you don’t use needles, you just use your arms. And I’d seen these things on Pinterest and so on, and I’d thought “As if… That must be so difficult; I can’t believe people do that.” And actually I picked it up so quickly, and now ‘m obsessed with it. Everything in my house is covered in giant knitting. A giant knitted throw, a giant knitted thing on the floor, I’ve got a tea cosy, and I’m going to make a dog bed soon. And it’s really quick. I made a throw that was ridiculous; it must have been six or seven metres long, in about four hours.

 

Your twin passions are craft and cooking. Do you think there’s a lot of common ground between the two?

Yeah, absolutely, and I think that’s why I feel really at home trying out a new craft. Cooking is all about creating, it’s a very hands-on thing. I don’t tend to cook from recipes, I just cook by instinct, and I think there’s a big crossover there. The skills do seem to work in parallel.

 

Where does the inspiration for all of this come from? Did you grow up in a household where this sort of thing happened?

Yeah, I did, actually. My parents were both very good cooks. My dad was constantly creating something. He was, and still is, obsessed with doing the house up. I remember when I was really young, him creating these amazing mosaic pillars that had lizards running round the outside, and I remember him just slaving over them for a month, and thinking “What is he doing?” But when he was finished, he had these beautiful things. I mean, they’re a little out of fashion now, but they stood in our living room for as long as I can remember, and he was just really proud of them. It was something he’d made and designed himself, and nobody else had anything like it. Probably for good reason.

 

If you were only allowed to do one of craft or cooking, which would it be?

That is a very difficult question, seeing as I would say that cooking is a craft. I’m not sure that they can be separated like that. The thing is, you have to cook every day to eat good food, so I’d probably go with that. But I would like to say that I believe cooking is a craft.

 

Craft It Yourself starts on Channel 4 on Tuesday 25th July at 8pm.