In addition to our regular workshop in East London, we also take Fast Fashion Therapy on tour and join repair cafes and events around London. Please email us on hello@fastfashiontherapy.co.uk if you would like us to host a workshop at your event
November 2023 workshop at The Create Place, Bethnal Green
Change to our Monday evening workshops
There is a big change at the Create Place! After five years of running workshops on a Monday evening we are swapping to Saturday lunchtimes. We hope you can make the new scheduling.
Monthly Workshop Schedule
We run regular clothes mending workshops three times a month in London and online. We hope you can join us to repair your clothes.
Online Mend-a-Long – First Monday of the month The Remakery in Brixton, London – The Third Monday of the month The Create Place, Bethnal Green, London – Saturday lunch times. Please see the full schedule above as the date varies each month.
The Remakery sessions cost £4. The online and Create Place session are free. We no longer have funding for these sessions, if you are able to make a donation we really appreciate it. Either by booking a donation ticket on Eventbrite or we send out a donation link for the Create Place email bookings. The money goes towards our running costs such as sewing supplies, our Zoom account, insurance and first aid certificates. Thanks in advance.
If you would like to book a workshop for your event, place of work, school or college then please get in touch via email on hello@fastfashiontherapy.co.uk – We have a list of workshop ideas here or we can tailor make them for your own requirements.
As we approach our fifth birthday we would like to say a massive thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your continued support. Our workshops have been busier than ever with hundreds of clothes repaired and lots of new friends made. Thank you to everyone who has come along to The Create Place, The Remakery and joined us via Zoom. Thanks to all the charities and businesses who have asked us to teach clothes mending in their place of work. Thanks too if your support has simply been to read our newsletters. It does all make a difference and encourages us to carry on.
Photos from our Fast Fashion Therapy workshops during 2023 at The Create Place and The Remakery
Community Support
Our community clothes mending workshops at The Create Place have been free from July 2022 to July 2023 Thanks to the Tower Hamlets Small Grants Fund. Thank you to the team at East End Community Foundation for their support.
How Fast Fashion Therapy started
Five years ago Sarah started a clothes repair workshop at The Create Place in Bethnal Green and Eleanor started a similar workshop at the same time. The team at St Margaret’s House suggested we collaborate to run one workshop. Eleanor had already come up with the catchy name and Fast Fashion Therapy was born! Over the past five years our clothes mending skills and friendship has grown. We enjoy working together, keeping each other motivated and bounce ideas of each other. Our workshops would be nothing without all the support from everyone who has joined a session, whether that is in person or online. Getting together as a group and seeing how many people really are engaged with sustainability is inspiring. It seems like we are all keen to find practical solutions to the problems surrounding us and these collective community experiences are more important than ever!
Autumn Schedule
We are taking a break from workshops in August and will be back in September. There are lots of clothes mending and general sewing workshops taking place over the summer from other workshop providers. Eventbrite is a good place to search for them in your local area.
We have made a slight change to our workshops this Autumn and have reduced our sessions to one a month at The Create Place in Bethnal Green. Please find the new schedule below:
1st Monday of the month: Online mend-a-long via Zoom
3rd Monday of the month: In-person workshop at The Remakery, Brixton
4th Monday of the month: In-person workshop at The Create Place, Bethnal Green
The workshops are not available to book yet, we will let you know via our newsletter, Instagram and Facebook when we have listed them and they are ready to book.
We have lots of ‘how to’ videos over on our blog to help keep you going with your clothes mending during August.
Free Clothes Mending Workshop for Chelmsford Residents, 20 May 2023
Fast Fashion Therapy was on tour and visited Chelmsford in Essex on Saturday. We hosted two workshops. Residents were asked to book in and bring along a selection of clothes to be mended. A few soft toys and a sofa cushion cover also made an appearance.
Hand sewing clothes repair workshop
The workshop focused on hand-sewing repair skills, including darning and patching techniques. These techniques work well on holes in knitted and jersey jumpers and t-shirts, as well as tears and holes in jeans, trousers, skirts, and shirts. We’ll also helped participants with simple fixes like sewing on buttons, taking up hems, and fixing small rips in seams.
Repairing Jeans
Boro and Sashiko style stitching to repair jeans
Repairing shirts
patch created from the inside yoke of the shirt
used to patch a hole created by the button
patch for hole under the arm
Thanks to everyone who came along and made both workshops inclusive and welcoming. We enjoyed listening to all the sustainable ideas being swapped for the local area. Huge thanks to Emilia from Chelmsford Council for inviting us along and all the brilliant organisation.
We are super impressed with the Love Your Chelmsford website. There is a mass of information on there about sustainable fashion with easy to follow advice. There is even a full checklist and tips to help you organise your own clothes swap. Plus an upcycling competition for teenagers.
A huge thank you to everyone who has supported our community clothes mending workshops this year. All of the mending techniques and tips that we share mean nothing without the people who come to our workshops or connect with us online. Getting together as a group and seeing how many people really are engaged with sustainability is inspiring. It seems like we are all keen to find practical solutions to the problems surrounding us and these collective community experiences are more important than ever!
Thank you to St Margaret’s house, The Create Place and The Remakery for the use of your warm and welcoming venues and for sharing the news to a wider group of people. Our workshops at The Create Place are free to attend thanks to Tower Hamlets Small Grants Fund.
Our online mend-a-long is free to join thanks to a grant from Localgiving and Postcode Society Trust, a grant-giving charity funded by players of People’s Postcode Lottery. Want to join us next year? We are taking bookings for our 2023 workshops on Eventbrite or send us an email. More details on the calendar section of our website.
Wishing you all a happy holidays and a healthy 2023. Sarah & Eleanor x
Thanks to everyone who has joined us so far this Autumn. It is great to be back at the in person and online workshops, sharing ideas on how to mend our clothes after a summer break.
Our online sessions was particularly busy have been particularly busy and we have a few regulars joining our session from the other side of the Atlantic. We enjoyed fascinating discussions on clothes mending and we promised to share the links for all the recommendations.
It was Zero Waste Week at the beginning of September and we chatted about how to use up the small pieces of fabric left over from altering and upcycling clothes. Making twine or cord from scrap fabrics is time consuming but satisfying. Elizabeth is crocheting with hers. Wendy Ward creates new clothes from old clothes and fabric by patching it together. Such as the sweatshirt above worn by Barley from Fabrications. Listen to Barley and Wendy on the Check Your Thread podcast which shares ideas on sewing sustainably. Karen recommended following The Thrifty Stitcher who mostly teaches dressmaking but many are also relevant for clothes repair such as this video on how to hem stretch fabrics. Diane was mending a hole in her T-shirt during our online chat. We shared our video on how to darn as this technique is useful for mending any stretch fabrics as well as jumpers and socks.
Join us on the first Monday of the month via Zoom. 7:30 to 8:30pm. Next session is 7th November. We chat and share clothes mending ideas as we sew. It is an informal teaching workshop but feel free to ask us and any of the friendly group repair questions. Sign up to our newsletter to automatically receive joining details. Or book via Eventbrite.
The Create Place, Bethnal Green At our first October session at The Create Place the sewing machines were redundant. Everyone opted for hand sewing to mend their clothes. It resulted in a calm relaxed workshop. Everyone chatted about the places they were from and how they ended up in East London. We are back on Monday for more clothes mending fun. We are at The Create Place at St. Margaret’s House on the 2nd and 4th Monday of the month. The next couple of sessions are full but we have space on the 28 November. Please send us an email if you would like us to book you in.
The second session of the month was super busy with lots of new attendees and regulars. The sewing machines were back with a hive of mending activity along with plenty of hand sewing and darning.
We were back at The Remakery in Brixton on Monday. Thanks to everyone who came along making it a busy and fun evening. We fixed our clothes with jeans patching, pocket fixing, replacing elastic in waistbands, altering the fit on a dress, turning up the cuffs on a jacket, patching pyjamas, darning mittens, repairing a hole in a T-shirt and fixing the straps on a bag. Phew, all of that in 90 minutes! We are back at The Remakery on the 21st November. Book via Eventbrite. The event says 14th November at the moment but it will be updated soon. We are at The Remakery every third Monday of the month.
BIG GREEN WEEK: Thanks to everyone who came along to our T-shirt upcycling workshop in September for Big Green Week – we had loads of fun chopping and changing T-shirts, adding stitching and embellishments. Or making them into something completely different! Thanks @st.margarets.house and @thecreateplace for inviting us to take part
Our community clothes mending workshops at The Create Place are free thanks to Tower Hamlets Small Grants Fund. The workshops get busy so please book your place in advance via Eventbrite or send us an email. Click on the workshop button above for more details.
Our online mend-a-long is free to join thanks to a grant from Localgiving and Postcode Society Trust, a grant-giving charity funded by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
Our clothes mending workshops were super busy in April. Both in person at The Create Place and online via Zoom. It is really encouraging that so many of you want to mend your clothes, saving them from landfill to be worn again. We really appreciate the enthusiasm you bring to our workshops, chatting and helping each other with tips on clothes mending and how to live a bit more sustainably. Thanks to everyone who joins in to create this friendly and welcoming community. We are looking forward to being back in Bethnal Green and Brixton this month after a break for the Easter holidays. Please scroll down for workshop booking details.
Join us for a workshop
The Create Place We are back on the 9th and 23rd May this month. We are already full for the 9th May but we have lots of places for the 23rd if you want to book your place. Either book via Eventbrite or send us an email to hello@fastfashiontherapy.co.uk to book your place.
The Remakery We are back in Brixton on the 16th May. Bring along a couple of items of clothing to repair and we will help get you started. If there are any particular materials you need, please let us know in advance. We only have a couple of sewing machines so please bring along some hand sewing repairs too. Book via Eventbrite, £3.50
Online via Zoom We welcome new attendees to our group of regulars who log in from around the UK, USA, Canada and Australia. It is an opportunity to get through our clothes repairs whilst we chat and share tips, it isn’t a formal teaching session but please ask questions. Join us on 6th June. As a subscriber to this newsletter you will automatically receive joining details.
We have been keeping a basic list of all the clothes that everyone has been bringing with them to our workshops. The idea is that we can compile a basic audit of the number and type of garments that people repair. An audit of the amount garments that we have all saved from landfill. We will share the half year results before the summer.
This event is presented in association with the University of Birmingham as part of The Air We Breathe
Join us for a practical and inspiring sewing workshop on repair, alteration and upcycling skills. You’ll learn how to mend with darning techniques and patch with scrap fabric and embellishments.
The fashion industry accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions. As citizens, we’re encouraged to live a more ethical life and simultaneously urged to consume more and more. But one small change we can all make is to upcycle or repair clothing rather than always buying new.
This event is presented in association with the University of Birmingham as part of The Air We Breathe – a brand new public programme, with an exhibition, activities and events that explore the close relationships between us, our environment and our air quality. From a hydrogen train to a sci-fi forest, discover the work being done by the University of Birmingham to deliver clean air both in Birmingham and around the world – and how you can get involved.
Materials and equipment will be provided but please bring along an item of clothing you would like to repair (by hand) or practice on the items provided. We will be showing hand sewing techniques on this occasion.
Details:
Where:
The Exchange: 3 Centenary Square, Birmingham, B1 2DR
‘Garment-mending workshops are opening up across the country, promoting a more responsible attitude to fashion and a space to unwind. Fleur Britten and her holey sweater drop in’ Stella Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph, 23 January 2022
We are thrilled to be included in Stella Magazine’s article on mending circles. Thanks to Fleur Britten for getting in touch and including Fast Fashion Therapy. It is encouraging to see so many clothes mending groups popping up all over the country.
‘People share ideas on the local area, their favourite charity shops and fashion’s lack of sustainability. People arrive with no sewing skills, but leave with their clothes fixed and always happy. It’s addictive.’
Sarah Richards, Fast Fashion Therapy, Stella Magazine
Want to find out more? Come along to one of our London workshops on Monday evenings or join us online if you live further way.
This week we got the chance to go back to Art School but this time we were teaching and not students. Although I was tempted to join the students for the rest of their Winterfest event. Norwich University of the Arts host a week long event to help students with their wellbeing and socialise with other courses that they might not otherwise meet.
We taught an hour long darning workshop, explaining how darning can be used to mend jumpers, T-shirts and woven fabrics. Some of the students were from illustration and graphic design courses so they don’t usually get the chance to sew at college. However, they all picked up the technique really quickly. Practicing on swatches of an old worn out jumper, they are now ready to transfer their skills onto their own clothes.
Patching next and we explained the overstitch, which helps edge the patch and prevent it from fraying. Onto the Japanese technique of Boro and Sashiko. Some of the students also experimented with the traditional blanket stitch.
Thanks to Norwich University of the Arts for inviting us to be part of their Winterfest. I wanted to join the students on their other sessions which included drawing live owls, pottery painting and bingo!
Please get in touch if you are interested in us hosting a clothes mending workshop at your college, work, event or a group of friends. We can visit in person (if not to far from London) or host the workshops online.
Visiting Norwich gave us chance to visit a couple of our favourite charity shops
Sue Ryder vintage charity shop in Norwich city centre is a treasure trove of clothes, homeware, textiles and haberdashery. A short bus ride away is The Big C craft supply shop in Wymondham.An organised haven of art materials, fabric and haberdashery in a large warehouse. It is worth the trip, just remember to take a big bag with you!
Have you started wearing your winter clothes and noticed they need a bit of TLC? We have arranged lots of clothes mending workshops to help you those jumpers, tights and socks darned, jeans patched and hems repaired.
31 October | ‘Fix your Knitwear’ workshop at Woodfield Pavilion
Join us for this workshop to pick up some new sewing techniques that will help you to repair and refresh your tired knitwear. Save a jumper Save the planet!
Tickets are £15 per person (plus booking fee) and includes a small kit of 4 x needles, a selection of yarns (3 woollen yarns and 2 cotton yarns) and a ‘How to Darn’ instructional card.
It isn’t a formal teaching session, an hour to encourage us all to get our clothes mended.
7:30 to 8:30pm
6th November | Sutton Japanese Boro Workshop
Set in the unique Tudor setting of Whitehall Historic House, this workshop will help you mend and up-cycle old or damaged clothes. The workshop will take you through the basics ‘visible mending’ techniques to leave you feeling All materials and kit will be provided in the workshop.
A regular sewing workshop at The Create Place in Bethnal Green Eleanor and Sarah are on hand to help you repair and upcycle your clothes, practice techniques on examples or bring along your own clothes to repair and alter.
A regular sewing workshop: Eleanor and Sarah are on hand to help you repair and upcycle your clothes, practice techniques on examples or bring along your own clothes to repair and alter.
