This is a review of Stitch Club: what’s good and bad about it, and why I cancelled my subscription.

Stitch Club is a hybrid between a course provider and a private social media website. The general themes of the courses are about experimenting with techniques, sometimes with the aim of producing a particular type of art (for example, portraits, sculpture, samplers).

The social media aspect is largely tied to the courses. If you register onto a course (all courses come included with the subscription) you can post on the course social media feed about how the course is going for you, sharing pictures of your work. There’s also a “community” feed and a “work in progress” feed, as well as an introductions page. The community is friendly and the moderation team take an active role in it. There are a few posts a day. It reminds me of a cross between a reasonably moderated Facebook group and a very slow but active Discord without a live-chat feature.

The problem is that the way I would want to use it - the way it would fit into my life - isn’t worth the price for me. If I had absolutely nothing to do with my time other than art then I think I would get more out of it. As it is, sewing is a generally slow process, particularly if you’re not using a sewing machine, and I do it when I feel like it because what’s the point of getting burned out of something that’s supposed to be relaxing? I like the idea of doing the courses, but not at the expense of doing the projects I either need to do because they’re practical or want to do but don’t fit into the course themes. I also can’t imagine finishing a course in less than two months: at that rate, I’d have spent about £58 on one e-learning course, because the full rate of Stitch Club is £29/mo.

This brings me to my next issue. I am conflicted about the selectivity of Stitch Club, effectively imposed by the pricing. What it creates is a community of people who (1) consider themselves textile artists specifically which may alienate, e.g. “crafters” who do exactly the same thing, (2) can stump up the costs, and (3) have enough time to do the courses. I also want to note that you need to be signed up to a waiting list to receive an invitation to Stitch Club, which I can see being useful for the site owners for both pragmatic and cynical reasons. It would help with the flow of new users, but there’s also the fact that you only find out the price once you get off the waiting list (unless you happen to read the T&Cs before you even have the chance to sign up to the site), and then you only have a small window of time to give them the money to see what’s in the website, and there’s also a limited-time half-price deal for the first two months. I know a funnel when I see one, so it was frustrating because I really wanted to find out what was available but I also knew I was feeling pressure to act because of intentional design decisions.

One of the absolute benefits of Stitch Club is its ability to appeal to an older audience than a lot of new social media which may have older people on it but does not cater to them in any particular way. I was, in this particular way, an outlier on Stitch Club but I think that’s a good thing. Stitch Club has a really good sense of community: you’re effectively guaranteed to receive kind and thoughtful written responses to work. This is something generally absent from large social media platforms, and the smaller, free-or-cheap sites such as Mastodon instances are basically just there for Linux users and related open-source software enthusiasts, even when they try not to be. Which is fine enough - I like those things too - but I think what I’m generally seeking is a website with the atmosphere of a forum from the 2000s that isn’t literally a forum from the 2000s, where I can talk about art in a setting where everybody has agreed that sales pitches are off the table. Stitch Club is the closest I feel like I have gotten in quite a long time.

The closest point of comparison I know of is another medium-specific website, Printmaker’s Matrix. The main focus on Printmaker’s Matrix is competitions: a theme is announced and artists submit work that they made to the competition. I’ve never actually submitted because I’ve never managed to respond to the theme in time to stand a chance, but in general I like the idea of it. Printmaker’s Matrix is independently operated. The main problem with it is that the community features are unpopular. Printmaker’s Matrix originally used a Discord server as its main community hub. It was never particularly active, but it had the benefit of being accessible through an app. Now it features an embedded chatroom, but nobody uses it. A chatroom behind a website login seems like a real throwback, which is a shame because it’s hypothetically a reasonable way to operate a community. I think that expectations around what’s a reasonable way to engage with social media have shifted, and it’s far more complicated for website owners to keep up now than it was in the past.

Is it possible to have something between Printmaker’s Matrix and Stitch Club? Maybe. What would I recommend right now? It depends. I would cautiously recommend Stitch Club for people with enough time and money for it, because I don’t think there’s an alternative to speak of. I am sure that if you worked through the courses you would learn a lot, and if you manage to do a course each month you at least get some value for your money. Otherwise, I’m not sure what to suggest, because the other places are either desolate, occupy different niches, or are governed by content algorithms you effectively need to be a wizard to predict. I am also interested to see where Printmaker’s Matrix goes in the future, and as it’s in active development, it’s still possible its creators will hit upon something that works.

What is particularly uncomfortable to me about a future where social media companies might charge this much for what are effectively single communities is that it means that most people, if they could afford it, would be limited to choosing one community of this type to be a part of online. I have to hope that there is a middle ground for pricing between ‘absolutely free’ (paid for out-of-pocket by its creators, which is often unsustainable) and ‘an extra mobile phone contract.’ For example, a lesser monthly fee, possibly alongside a pricing model that allowed users to pay for specific material such as courses.

One thing I think is a really good idea, though obviously still in development, is the Directories feature of Printmaker’s Matrix. I would have liked it if Stitch Club could have had functionality to help with finding in-person communities. That is what I am going to continue to do without it, and what I could hope the ultimate function of smaller social media websites might eventually be: to connect and scaffold in-person communities. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it’s profitable.