Day Three: Design A Class

Yesterday, the Durham Scrap Exchange kindly hosted Li Sashay for our first time teaching a Basic Mending and Alterations with the help of Rowan Martell, their red-headed fun events coordinator. If you've never been to the Scrap Exchange, it's a wonderful artist paradise that focuses on recycling and reusing. They helped me a lot when I was first starting out and it was fun to give back.

All proceeds from the class fees went directly to support the community. After talking it over, we (Please read Rowan and the amazing staff did the heavy lifting) came up with this class as a way to teach women in the community learn how to repair and alter their clothing to save and look better. We had 5 lovely women in our first class, all from different walks of life. Everything from a cop to a librarian to a computer geek.

Over 3 hrs. we got to teach them the basics behind quick and dirty mending and alterations. They learned how to sew on buttons, use fabric fusible interfacing to do instant patches, and hemming/taking in sides on their sewing machines. I can't wait to see what they will make. The whole group was talented and really made me smile.

I loved getting to hear the projects each woman intended to do. One woman was excited at the idea of fixing her husband's soldier uniforms as he is always ripping them. Another had a tote bag full of t-shirts she planned to shortened for her frame as her shirts were always too long. Two women came in to learn how to alter their clothes for their curvy frames. And the last one found herself forever trying to fix clothing to her taller frame without resorting to big and tall. Thank you all for coming. It was wonderful to meet you.

And a special thanks to the staff at the Scrap Exchange for hosting us and helping us design this project to help women succeed with fabric. Especially, thank you Rowan Martell, Julia Gartell, and Ruth Eckles.

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