Kate Megaw, wearing one of her knitted necklaces, says craft is appealing to more people. Pictures / Babiche Martens

Kate Megaw, wearing one of her knitted necklaces, says craft is appealing to more people. Pictures / Babiche Martens

Craft has come a long way, baby. Gone are the tea cosies, toilet-roll-cover dollies and baby quilts of your granny's day. A new generation of young women and men are reclaiming their forebears' handiwork and making it their own - in a decidedly fashionable way. Often they're not even calling it craft.

Everyone knows how the likes of Kate Moss, Julia Roberts and Chloe Sevigny have taken up knitting, but let's move on, shall we?

The craft revival started about five or six years ago, dovetailing nicely with the whole bohemian I'm-an-individual fashion trend. All of a sudden knitting, crocheting, quilting, embroidery and threading big wooden beads on fishing line was awfully trendy. It was all about adding your own touch to clothes in an era of mass manufacturing.

Since then, fashion has changed a lot, as it is wont to do. The over-embellished outfit featuring a gypsy skirt with your typical crafty bits and pieces isn't quite as popular anymore.

So what's happened to crafting? Has it, too, fallen out of fashion? Definitely not.

In the United States, the craft business has grown by US$3.2 billion ($4.8 billion) since 2002 and apparently three out of four American households now have at least one crafter, according to last year's American Craft and Hobby Association's survey.

And crafting with attitude is still going strong - as one popular website, Craftster.org puts it, "There are no tea cosies without irony."

In New Zealand modern crafting is alive and well and residing in various boutiques - although these days it's usually known as "handmade" or maybe even, in loftier circles, "art".

"Craft is crossing over," says Kate Megaw, who designs knitted rompersuits, shorts and knitted jewellery under the Penny Sage label, sold at the Miss Crabb boutique on Ponsonby Rd, where she works.

"And it's crossing over because it doesn't necessarily look like craft anymore. So it's appealing to more people," she says.

Miss Crabb also stocks other examples of craftiness that don't look traditional - such as silk appliqued dresses by the label Who Is Dead Martin? and prints on oversized Crabb T-shirts designed by local artist Pritika Lal.

You'll find other bits and pieces of handmade art and craft hidden between the more regularly manufactured garments at high-fashion boutiques all over town, whether it's hand-drawn artwork on a T-shirt, handmade jewellery or bits of recycling.