Fashion Revolution Week: Fashion Fix

Hello and welcome to day 3 of Fashion Revolution Week on my blog.

I hope you've been enjoying the content so far.

Today's theme is Fashion Fix, all about fixing and tailoring your clothes to make them last.

Britons binned clothes worth £12.5 billion in 2017 leading to 300,000 tonnes of textiles ending up in landfill, according to The Times. Undoubtedly a large percentage of that clothing was repairable. And with the UK's governments focus on STEM subjects, not many of us learn the skills needed to repair clothing. So teaching yourself sewing skills as an adult is a great way to revolutionise your fashion, making your clothes last longer.

This post was probably the one I was the most nervous about. Because I'm not a very experienced sewer at all, and I was struggling to think of any content, I don't want to really give how to guides as when I do sew I probably do it all wrong.

As some of you may know my new years resolution was to get better at sewing, and so far this year I've done a lot less than I wanted to.

But I thought I would show what I've achieved so far this year, what else I plan to sew. And a few great online places you can learn about sewing!

So far this year, I have sewed up a pair of vintage jeans that had a huge hole in the crutch. These jeans are actually Alice's but we share a lot of our clothes (more on that tomorrow) and since I repaired them for her, I think I'm entitled to a fair few wears.

I have also been working on painting this denim shirt, that I brought second-hand from a charity shop. All the illustrations on the back are The X-Files themed, because I'm obsessed with that show! My sewing skills aren't the best, but I can customise clothes in other ways. I really enjoy painting, and this shirt was my first big fabric paint project. My original fabric paints were a gift and aren't vegan, but more recently I have brought some vegan fabric paints from Kruel Javana. There's still a few things I would like to improve about this shirt, so it's not entirely finished but it's not far off. Painting is a fun way to customise clothing, especially if your drawing/painting skills are better than your sewing skills. Obviously this isn't a repair, but I think painting is a fun way to add some excitement to your wardrobe.

Other things that need repairing, that I plan to do over the coming weeks, are two coats both of which need their pockets repairing. One is a simple sew along a seam job not dissimilar from my jean repair job. The second needs completely new pockets as all the pocket fabric has come away.

I also need to add a new catch to these black trousers as they are too big, just altering where the catch is on them will make them wearable and save them from the charity shop or landfill.

I hope I might of inspired you to do some sewing of your own. But if you want some help I'm now going to list some great places to learn sewing online.

- Ethical Brands For Fashion Revolution have two sewing and mending sessions today (22 of April 2020), you can find tickets here.

There's a stitch and bitch, a discussion about ethical Fashion, over mending at 3pm.

And an Upcycling workshop at 4pm.

- Millie Pom is hosting a Clothing Repair Surgery on Friday 24th April, where she will answer all your mending questions. Find details here.

- XR Fashion Action run guerrilla mending and knitting classes, keep an eye out on their Instagram for the next one. I attended one last week, which was really enjoyable until my internet cut out.

- Made To Sew is a youtube channel with vast amounts of sewing videos, that cater to complete beginners to more experienced sewers, and is a great online resource.