Mending Clothes with Patches
September 24 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Free
Did the knees finally give out on your favorite jeans? Did you find a mysterious tear in a beloved shirt? Let’s mend them together! Join Lizzie for a class dedicated to patching, where you will learn the basics of repairing your cloth goods with this tried and true method. Bring an item of clothing that has a hole, a tear, or a thin area in the fabric – all great candidates for a patch! A variety of different fabrics will be available to create patches, but if you have a preferred fabric (or even a pair of old clothing that you’d like to cut up and repurpose!), please bring it along.
This program is not intended for knitwear, which is better addressed by darning, a different mending technique that is a type of weaving. Questions? Give Lizzie a call at 413-717-7827 or send her an email at lizzie@whrl.org.
We all love a good deal on clothing, but “fast fashion,” or the rapid mass production of inexpensive, low-quality clothing mimicking popular clothing trends, has enormous consequences, from a variety of environmental impacts to its exploitation of garment workers. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “by endlessly offering new trends at cheap prices, fast fashion brands such as Shein, Zara, and H&M encourage consumers to continually buy more clothing. Consequently, previous purchases, perhaps worn a handful of times, are soon discarded.”
Let’s talk about some of the impacts of fast fashion:
Fast fashion is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions. To put this into perspective, that is more than all flights and maritime travel combined. This number is set to increase by a whopping 50% by 2030.
Synthetic materials like polyester are the primary driver of plastic microfibers entering our oceans. Approximately 35% of all microplastics are derived from these synthetic materials.
Fast fashion production is responsible for 17-20% of global water pollution.
Why mend clothes? Extending the life of clothing has a significant positive impact on the planet. Extending the life of clothes by an extra nine months reduces its carbon, water, and waste footprint by around 20-30% each, and cuts the cost of resources used to supply, launder, and dispose of clothing by 20%. In short, mending clothes not only saves you money, but it helps the environment!