Our clothing repair workshop is coming up in Term 4, on Saturday 28 October. It starts at 10am and costs $10.

If you’d like to repair your clothes but you don’t know how to sew, this workshop is for you!

Join professional mender Mary-Ellen Jordan to learn simple sewing skills that just use a needle and thread, before progressing to some more advanced skills such as decorative stitching and patching for funky visible repairs. This workshop will cover:

• Types of needles and thread and their uses

• Basic hand sewing stitches

• How to hand stitch up a seam that’s come undone

• How to hand stitch up a hem that’s come undone

• How to sew on a button

• How to make a patch and stitch it onto your garment

• Some fancier stitches to boost your visible mending game

• Ideas and tricks for visible mending

Bring along a garment that you’d like to repair, or just come along and use the available materials to learn the techniques for future use.

Mary-Ellen Jordan is a professional mender who almost always uses simple hand stitching techniques in her work. She specialises in visible mending, putting a contemporary twist on traditional mending techniques by using them to fix a problem and add a touch of colour, pattern or texture to the garment. You can see some examples on Mary-Ellen’s facebook and instagram accounts @thetinyinstitute.

Book your place here.

Our new bee garden right on the front corner benefitted from a mulch delivery on Friday. Thanks Bert and team at Darebin Council. It is looking great!

And … in the rest of our garden we’ve got lovely flowers 🌸 of all colours … and blossom emerging on our fruit trees. Happy nearly spring days.

Thanks to everyone who came along to our first series of repair workshops. They were super!

We’ve got another series in Term 4 … we’re just confirming the dates now and will let you know when they are up for booking in.

Thanks Simone at Richmond Community Learning Centre for applying for the Sustainability Victoria grant that is subsidising these workshops and thanks for sharing the delivery hours with us … and other Yarra Neighbourhood Houses.

Speaking of which, this week Yarra Council will be endorsing the new Yarra Neighbourhood House Partnership Strategy. Hooray! It is just great as a tiny grassroots organisation to have such a strong strategic partnership with local government. With regular funding built in.

And of course it is wonderful to have such lovely supportive colleagues across the houses.

How lovely are these little seed packs created by our gardeners on Friday!

They’re out in the seed library ready for neighbourhood planting … if you’re ready to start your spring garden pop past!

Darebin is reviewing their waste strategy in relation to regular household collection, hard rubbish collection, public bins and the circular economy.

If you’d like to comment on any of this click here before 7 September and add your two bobs worth!