SEW BUSY: Ortega (left) and Logan set up a space where dabblers can spread out their craft projects. Mark Estes

JANE LOGAN and Jackie Ortega hold workouts each week, but not at the gym. The friends, who met as undergrads in the product design department at Stanford, have started a business to help people exercise their craft skills.

Craft Gym was born from years of struggling to find room to work on projects. Logan jokes that crafts can easily turn someone into “the roommate everyone hates because you have stuff all over the living room.” In October, she and Ortega found space in San Francisco where visitors can attend workshops and share equipment—without making a mess in their own homes.

Logan and Ortega initially sought studio space for a gift-wrapping station, but their idea grew to include a variety of three-hour workshops. Several evenings each week, they convert an elementary school classroom into Craft Gym. Tables covered in brown paper and prepped with supplies fill the center of the room. A table by the door showcases samples from former and future classes: a pulled-thread scarf, a messenger bag sewn out of recycled plastic bags, fizzy bath bombs, and silver rings made of precious-metal clay. Logan and Ortega select music to match each gathering: Bobby Vinton crooned “Blue Velvet” during a workshop on velour throw pillows; Beck’s Odelay album set the mood when clients made stick ponies.

“A lot of people will dabble in crafting, but there’s a lot of material or equipment that you need to buy to take the next step. We offer a wide assortment of crafts so that you don’t have to make that investment. We’re also trying to be able to have someone build confidence as they go and develop skills as they have time, rather than give them a strict program and schedule,” Ortega says.

The founders hope Craft Gym can communicate the importance of making time for a creative endeavor. “People spend a lot of time in front of the computer, rather than dealing with tactile things or playing in their mind’s eye,” Logan says. “A creative workout is a real change from the normal drudgery of my day. It’s definitely something that I do for myself, and something that gives me the ability to express myself.”

Logan and Ortega say the greatest rewards come from the surprising outcomes of projects. One participant added glam to her stick pony with glitter eyelashes; another person found that a certain clay lends itself to making rosebuds. Ortega says, “We never know what people are going to get excited about. Somehow you have this kernel of an idea and put it out there, and then somebody takes it, runs with it and does something really exciting.”