We’re excited to announce that we’ve just launched a brand new crowdfunding campaign to raise money for a custom-built bike trailer!
At Stitched Up, our aim to is teach you the skills you need so you can create, maintain and mend your own unique wardrobe. We encourage the use of recycled fabrics, and inspire people to reduce textile waste by upcycling and altering clothes in a world of fast fashion.
We run sewing workshops for individuals at our Chorlton HQ, but we also take them out and about to schools and other organisations.
Sewing equipment is delicate and heavy, and at the moment we have to rely on hiring vans which pushes our costs way up. So we had a great idea: an attachable, custom built bike trailer which can store a workshop load of items securely – then we can pedal off around Greater Manchester to reach our clients and participate in loads more community events.
Our trailer will have loads of functions, including a rain canopy (we are in Manchester after all), and we’ve worked in the cost for a second hand foldable bike so we can take our rig on the Metrolink!
Not only that, but the trailer will fold out into a portable workshop space. This will allow us to realise the millions of ideas we have for creating fun and unique workshops to all kinds of different events, whether that be a mobile mending service on the high street or a clothes swap and style surgery in your local park!
SO.. why?
Travelling by bike is not only better for the environment but it’s also FREE!
Protecting the environment is of utmost importance to Stitched Up. We almost exclusively use reclaimed materials for our workshops. It’s important to us that all aspects of our work fit with our ethos. Zero-carbon transportation has been an aspiration of ours for a long time.
The bike trailer would also help us support local small businesses. We’d use it to deliver repairs and commissions to Unicorn grocery and other local clients. Also the trailer will be built by local craftsman Alfred Chow out of reclaimed materials.
Our workshops bring strangers together, and learning new skills is a huge confidence booster. Sewing, mending and altering your own clothes not only helps you create your own unique look, but also reduces the negative impacts of fast fashion.
Manchester may be a big city but it feels like a close-knit community to us thanks to the connections we’ve made with customers, friends, makers, designers, sewists and clothes lovers over the past few years. We want to spread the love of sewing and upcycling further afield in Greater Manchester and grow this community more!
As a small non-profit organisation which runs largely on a voluntary basis, this project could not go ahead without your help. However, if each of our supporters gave just £1, we’d reach our target easily. Could you pledge £1 to help create our amazing custom-built bike trailer? Help us get this show on the road!
Stitched Up x
