Looking for a way to improve your impact on the planet?  Looking after your clothes by mending them and giving them another life is a fantastic way to reduce your household waste.

The clothing industry just feels like a mess when it comes to its responsibility for and response to the climate emergency. While the usual suspect of fast fashion tends to get a lot of blame, it goes all the way to the high street and up to the luxury brands. The sheer volume of waste created, virgin plastic used for items that get so little use and a lot of time end up in landfill. Also that landfill tends not to be on our door but shipped off somewhere else.

The good news is that we all can make a difference and that can start with learning skills on how to take care of clothes so that they last longer. Keeping our clothes for longer is absolutely a winner when it comes to our impact on the environment. It isn’t anything new. Caring for what we have was essential to our parents, grandparents’ generation and before.

To follow on from our Ladies Clothes Swap Shop, we are delighted to announce that we are hosting a series of free online workshops for the remainder of the year on sewing and saving your textiles. It is for anyone wishing to learn or improve their skills. It is free of charge and will be online as a zoom group class. A week after the event there will be a video on our website with the demonstration for those who could not join us on the day or if you wish to view certain skills again.

We are thrilled that the local creative businessperson, Vanessa of The Craft Corner will be the teacher for all 5 workshops. The cherry on top is that Vanessa is passionate about living a green life. Vanessa will provide step by step instructions for the class and as mentioned above will have a supporting video for after the class.

The first workshop is Visible Mending: How to fix, repair and give your clothes another lease on life.

Vanessa mentioned ‘this hand sewing workshop takes inspiration from the Japanese art of visible mending to show you how to darn, embroider and applique’

Date: Saturday 18^th September 11am – 12noon

How to join: Register here https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/visible-mending-with-zero-waste-maynooth-the-craft-corner-tickets-168014167899 also on www.zerowastemaynooth.ie

Cost: Zero!

Impact: Helping to save the earth! Yes really it does!

Materials:

-Clothes, socks, tops (any item of clothing with a hole in need of mending)

-Scraps of fabric (for larger holes and applique style mending)

-Needle and thread

-Threads: Embroidery yarn, wool, thicker threads. (I think wool socks need wool thread)

-Scissors and pins

-Darning mushrooms or circular bowl, curved surface to put inside your hole

Dates for other workshops – come to as many as you like! Share these dates with friends –

11am Saturday 16th October – How to make your own Halloween Costumes

11am Saturday 20^th November – Stitched baskets using material scraps

11am Saturday 27^th November – DIY Christmas decorations for your home and tree

11am Saturday 11^th December – Zero Waste gift wrapping both paper and material options

This series of workshops is kindly sponsored by Kildare County Council.