Thursday, April 10, 2014

Make Do and Mend

Today I pitched a workshop idea to a local organization whose goal is to encourage making through doing.

I called it "Make Do and Mend," and what I proposed was to teach a 2 hour workshop showing people how easy it is to care for their own wardrobes, and to stop throwing away or donating perfectly good clothes because no one ever taught them how to sew on a button or tack up the hems in their pants.  This seems to cover about 80% of the population.

The class could also potentially cover zipper replacement (jeans would be difficult without more know-how on garment construction, but standard skirt/pants zips wouldn't be too hard), some refashioning tips such as shortening sleeves, reshaping skirts, etc.

The application asked what my experience was to teach the course, and I said that I make almost all my own clothes, I run a business using recycled fabrics and I've taught an abridged version of this at every office I've worked, though usually they would rather buy me coffee and have me sew on their buttons.

Waiting to see if they take me up on it.

4 comments:

Becky said...

It sounds like a good idea for a workshop. I hope it works out for you!

Summer Flies said...

Things in the Southern Hemisphere are the same... I had a school mum tell me she would throw away anything that the button fell off as she didn't know how (or cared) to replace the button. Hope they take you up on it. I call it 'affluenza'... when you have too much money you can afford to throw things away, I guess.

DawnSSL said...

Great idea! I hope they allow you to teach it!

Kitty Frank, Realtor said...

Let me know what you hear back. I offered a similar thing in my area and there was very little interest so we didn't go forward with it.

As you say, people are excited to hand me something to fix for them but rarely are interested in learning to fix it themselves. I know they'd be so much happier with their wardrobe if they could immediately mend or hem something when they see a problem - but they don't see the connection. I guess its less stressful to just go to the mall and try again.