Do you need a jump start on, or a refresher course, in sewing and craft skills?

The Jo-Ann Fabric store in Monroe doesn’t have Creative Arts University – but the Jo-Ann stores in Ypsilanti and Taylor do.

I’ve taken a basic sewing class at the Ypsilanti store as a refresher from what I learned years ago. And the Monroe Jo-Ann had information fliers on a sales table today with the Taylor store’s class details.

Classes in January in Taylor include Wilton cake decorating, wedding jewelry, wedding floral pieces, one-stroke painting, quilting 101, knitting 101, and home decor pillows.

Now if you are pinching pennies, you’ll probably look at the cost of the class and think “Eeeekk! I can’t afford $25, $35 or $75 or whatever it costs plus the gas plus any additional supplies.”

Well, now, the true value is in learning a skill or craft that you can use in future budget-friendly projects.

There are a lot of adults, particularly women in my age bracket and younger, who never took home economics in school — or bothered to learn the domestic arts from their mothers or grandmothers — because it was assumed that many of us would become professional working peeps instead of “housewives.”

Well, guess what? If you end up in a financial situation where frugal living is necessary, someone in the family has to have basic homemaking skills whether or not he or she also works outside of the home.

One of the reasons our household income stretches as much as it does is because I can cook and bake and create homemade greeting cards and clean with old-fashioned methods and work on simple sewing projects. Etc.

Now with the gas prices, the advantage you have this winter that you didn’t have this summer is that gas prices are currently low.

But to save some money, this is what you do.

1. Go to the Creative University open houses that will be held in Taylor from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday Jan. 17 (the next one will be Saturday Feb. 14). If you sign up on one of those dates you will get 25 percent off selected classes and can see the projects first-hand.
2. As much as possible, pick the classes that meet only once or twice. Most of them are on such a schedule.
3. Get the class supply list as soon as possible. Everything you need will be available at the Taylor store, but you can also look for needed items among your own stash of stuff, among a friends’ or neighbor’s leftover supplies, or at the Monroe Jo-Ann or at Crafts 2000 in Monroe.
4. Make sure you are on the Jo-Ann sales flier mailing list so that you can purchase supplies with the help of sales (watch those sale dates because they do vary) and get those 40 percent off coupons that go to the mail-out customers.
5. Plan ahead for any other shopping or social trip you can bundle up with the drive to the Jo-Ann store. The Super Kmart in Taylor, for example, often has sales that are different from the Monroe Kmart deals.