Repair Cafe Blog

Ealing Repair Cafe receives The King’s Award for Voluntary Service

Ealing Repair Café, a group of volunteers based in Ealing have been awarded The King’s Award for Voluntary Service for 2025. This is the highest award a local voluntary group can receive in the UK and is equivalent to an MBE. Ealing Repair Café’s primary focus is to encourage and facilitate clothes and textiles mending…

Ealing Sewing machine lessons

Looking for a sewing machine class in Ealing? We are lucky to have a selection of great sewing classes available in Ealing. There are online courses too if this would be suitable for you. Please get in touch if you have other recommendations for other lessons, please contact us or comment below. Sewing Machine Lessons…

Join Ealing’s Fabric Swap and Sale Event October 2025

De-stash your fabric drawer, find new fabric and pattern treasures, meet other sewing bees and enjoy a cuppa & cake whilst supporting West London Days for Girls charity. Come along on Sunday 19 October from 3 pm to 5.30 pm at Northfields Community Centre in Ealing for some environmentally-friendly fabric shopping and swapping. Ealing Repair…

How to Extend the Life of School Uniforms

Children’s school uniform and sports kits are a necessary (but sometimes costly) family expense. So we have put together some tips on how to keep your children wearing and using their school uniform for longer. “The Wrong Blazer 2020” report shows that parents spend an average of £337 per year on uniforms for secondary school children and…

DIY Simple Purse: Easy Sewing Project

A simple purse that is simple to make. You can experiment with decorating them and use different styles stitching to practice your sewing skills. This purse is a great way to use up scraps of heavy fabrics like upholstery or denim from jeans. It has so many uses, for example a coin or credit card…

World Kindness Day Upcycling workshop

Join Ealing Repair cafe for World Kindness day on Wednesday 13 November to help make drawstring bags from old t-shirts and denim upcycled draft excluders from jeans. No sewing experience required. We will donate items to Age UK Ealing, Ealing Soup Kitchen and South Ealing Food cupboard. This free event is funded by Ealing Council.…

Upcycle t-shirt in draw string bag

Make this handy drawstring bag easily from an old t-shirt in just a few minutes. There’s minimal stitching and from one t-shirt you can get up to 4 bags.

Local Ealing Fabric and Sewing supplies 

When buying items for repairing and sewing it’s good to support your local high street. We are lucky to have some businesses locally to Ealing and West London that offer a great selection. Did you know that when you support a local shop it keeps more money in the local economy? When you spend a Magic…

Help develop a toolkit for clothes repair this January 2024

Looking for people who are interested in repairing clothes as part of being a sustainable consumer. Ealing Repair cafe in partnership with the RCA (Royal College of Art) to take part of clothes repair research project on Wednesday 24 January to evaluate the effectiveness of a repair toolkit and you are invited too, find out…

Make a draught excluder from old jeans

As we move into winter, and with increasing energy costs, you might be thinking about how to make your home more cosy and save some money on heating. One way you might do this is to use draught excluders at the bottom of draughty doors (or windows). Your can of course buy one. Or you…

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