A community centre is launching a green initiative where participants will learn the skills needed to mend and make clothes to avoid buying new.
Hilldrop Community Centre’s Relish Embellish Café will start a new series of ‘Mend and Make’ workshops next week. The weekly workshops will explore the impact of fast fashion on the environment.
Participants can practise basic stitching on a sewing machine using scrap fabric as well as hand sewing buttons and zips.
Workshop leader, Elaine Maffret, said that the classes highlight “the value of mending and repairing”. Also, the group will sew individual squares together as part of a larger project to create a community quilt. They are organising an excursion to Fashionenta in Finsbury Park which runs garment making sessions and supports those trying to break into the fashion industry.
UN figures have shown that it takes nearly 8,000 gallons of water to make just one pair of jeans and that three-fifths of all items of clothing produced annually are discarded by the end of the year. Hilldrop’s workshops, funded by the North London Waste Authority, encourage residents to reduce this waste by re-working their current items, and also to consider the impact of buying new.
Elaine said: “Environment and sustainability runs through everything that we do.”
Classes are running every Tuesday morning until mid-December.
