The Touchwood Project

From a poster for the new Reinvention Sewing Lounge, coming soon

It doesn’t look it yet, but below is the beginnings of the new Reinvention Sewing Lounge, one of our latest projects:

Soon our tipi will be furnished with sheepskin rugs, a woodburning stove, and a cornucopia of fabrics and craft tools to transform the clothes you’ve got sitting in the back of your closet into hip bags, pillows and something new you’d love to wear.

My favourite part: while you sew, you can sip gourmet coffee or tea and nibble on some of the best chocolate truffles I’ve ever had the privilege to sample (and I worked in a Belgian chocolatier’s in college so I know what I’m talking about).

The rebirth of sewing

The sewing lounge concept rides the crest of a modern, stylish crafting craze that’s huge in America and in cities and is gradually making its way here. With places like The Make Lounge in London, sewing has followed in the wake of knitting to become something trendy and hip, an activity that’s more about creative expression and socialising than just making something functional.

Recycling + making something better = “upcycling”

Touchwood’s take on it is to introduce the element of upcycling, or making something new and better out of something old. In our case, we’re asking people to bring a few items of clothing that are languishing in their wardrobes and bring them in for a makeover. I know I’ve been holding onto a silk jacket that’s the wrong colour and shape because I feel guilty about buying it and not wearing it — well now it could become a sleeping mask for me or a lovely pillow for a friend.

Or maybe you could turn a few moth-eaten sweaters into a scarf like this one:

Over the next couple weeks, I’ll start making labels, stringing up the solar-powered fairy lights, stoking the woodburning stove, and in general making it an Aladdin’s cave that people beat down the door to enter. The feel I’m going for is a bit of early 1900s English Empire with a dash of 1950s American retro.

Here’s some of the stuff I’ve gotten already:

Almost everything is secondhand, from the vintage tin trunk that will store the old sweaters, to the leather suitcases and hatboxes for supplies. I’ve trawled eBay and our charity shops for weeks hunting things down.

Inspiration from amazing books

I’ve got a huge stack of outstanding craft books for project ideas too which I’ll have in the tipi. I’m going to create little laminated cards with photos of projects that I’ll string up next to fabric so that people can get ideas for which project they want to work on while they’re here.

Show me the money

One of the biggest challenges we face with this project, and with Touchwood in the long term, is figuring out how to generate enough income to be sustainable. Because of our hybrid status as a business whose profits are channeled entirely into a social cause, we can receive grants to do community work, but our long-term goal is to be completely grant-free.

The problem is, the first 6 courses we did with the sewing pilot project taught us that many of the people here on the island are accustomed to things being heavily subsidised. I know my sewing course was about £45 for 8 weeks thanks to big subsidies, and when we asked people what they would expect to pay for a sewing course, some of the answers were £4(!)

Bear in mind this was having a professional sewing instructor on hand and all tools and materials provided for a 2 hour session. We knew when we ran it that there was much more we could be doing, and that’s what the sewing lounge is in part trying to explore.

So rather than charge a big fee upfront, can we earn income through sales of things like tea and chocolate alongside selling fabric? Charge £1, say, for a nice square of silk or eye-catching cotton print.

My thinking at the moment is to have two (at least) different types of sessions: one led by Kirsteen Stewart, a local fashion designer and sewing teacher, where you work on a specific project and learn specific skills, and another where people who already know the basics of sewing can come to work on their projects without an instructor. The first is more of a sewing class, the second is more a get-together.

We have 2-3 more grant-subsidised sessions to find out what will work.

Getting the pricing right

I’m thinking £4 entrance fee or free if you bring an extra item of clothing to donate. That’s for a two hour session where you can use all the tools we have. One or two of those sessions will also feature Kirsteen as instructor, but if she’s going to do it longer term, we’d have to charge at least £16 to be able to pay her.

We’ll also have the gourmet tea and coffee brewed on the woodburning stove and served up in these handmade mugs at £1.50, and chocolate truffles from Cocoa Mountain, based in Durness, at £1.25 each.

Secondhand wool sweaters will be sold for £6 and varying prices for some of the cottons and wools. Maybe Malcolm’s homemade soup for £2.50, though that gets into the realms of food, which may be too complicated.

We’re looking at 8-10 people at a time.

Show me the social purpose

The reason we’re doing all this?

Well the goal is to empower people by teaching them practical and fun skills which also help the planet by recycling materials that might otherwise be thrown away (just cause it goes to a charity shop doesn’t mean it won’t end up in landfill or being shipped far away — charity shops can only sell so much).

Our newly revised mission is to “empower you to make the world better”. I certainly have seen how knowing how to make something beautiful that’s homemade makes your world better and I’d like to help anyone else who agrees.

I don’t know if people will go for it, but the upside is if they don’t, think of all the yummy chocolate and hot drinks waiting for me.

How can we make this succeed?

What do you think? Have you been to a sewing lounge? What would make you go out of your way to attend ours if you lived here?

Tags: crafts, Pilot projects, social enterprise

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