I was thinking about why you can make any item from the beggining as long as you have the material (with a success chance). I thought I would be better if the things you know how to do from the start are based on your skill, and making you learn them from different ways. So if your survival skill is almost 0 for example, you don't know how to build a fire, of if your building skill is below 10% you only know how to make shelters.
To learn how to do/make new stuff there are several possibilities. Let's assume your tanning skill is below 10%, then you only know how to skin an animal and your chances of success are very low. Once it gets to 15% and you experience skinning a piece and it getting rotten a few times (i.e. from 2 to 5 based on intelligence) you get the idea of preservation. With that idea you can try to learn by yourself or try to find someone to teach you. I fyou try to learn by yourself, you only have the cure skin option available (and therefore can't clean it) after a few failed attempts to cure it, you learn to clean it first, then you can succesfully complete the curing process and you ability rises to 20%. Tanning, on the other hand, would always require someone to teach you.
The teaching process would require a payment depending of how mcuh the person likes you and how much time it takes to teach you. The time required to learn to do something depends of what you're trying to learn with a fixed time for it, modified by your intelligence. So learning to properly use a fishing road from another person could take an hour or so, while learning more complex stuff (like making wooden furniture) could take up to months.
Also you would get a boost in your skill pecent from being taugth from someone else.
Another possibility would be to observe an already made simple item to learn how to do it if your skill is at the right level (like a shutter, a door or a wooden mug).
I don't know how complicated would be this to be implemented, but I think it would be a ncie addition to add realism.
The idea doesn´t bad,
but I think that might put too much emphasis on leveling up.
This is the same, like getting a message, when you level up a skill.
On the one hand this would feel rewarding and motivating,
on the other hand it takes out a big chunk of the survival aspect:
e.g: when you are building several shelters in a row, just to train your skill/to be able to build a hut.