This free sewing workshop will combine visible mending – a simple clothing repair technique – with conversation and creativity, developing participants’ skills and building agency for change.

The session is part of DResscue, ONCA’s online and in-person programme of sewing and mending workshops and educational community events. Sally Bourner and Persephone Pearl are running it as part of the fantastic Transform Our World Youth Climate Summit.  Simply go to the Transform Our World website, sign up and log in to take part.

Each participant will need: 

• a holed/ torn garment or cloth to repair 
• a scrap of cloth to cover the hole 
• a needle 
• embroidery thread (any colour)

Participants of all levels of experience will learn how to extend the lifespan of a torn or holed garment using just a needle, thread and patch of cloth. As we stitch, we will discuss fast fashion and its environmental and social impacts, versus ‘slow’ and sustainable lifestyle activities. We’ll reflect on how creative activity can improve wellbeing as well as have positive environmental impacts. Takeaway messages from the session will be: reducing emissions through reducing waste; interwining fun, positive action and creativity; cultivating an ethos of repair, and framing repair as creative practice.