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 mendingContinue reading “Ealing Repair Cafe receives The King’s Award for Voluntary Service”
Category Archives: Sustainability
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 andContinue reading “How to Extend the Life of School Uniforms”
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 cardContinue reading “DIY Simple Purse: Easy Sewing Project”
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.
Sustainable Clothing Material Guide
Good on you have done the detective work for us and written the ultimate clothing material guide to the vast selection of fabrics found in clothes that you can find on shop shelves, in your wardrobe and fabric shops.
Fabric Swap and Sale
Come along and get some lovely fabric at Days for Girls sale and swap on Sunday 23 April 3pm until 5.30pm, at Northfields Community Centre, Ealing. Bring cash and as much or as little fabric you want to swap, as there is always plenty of fabric to chose from.
Sustainable wins: Fabric Wrapping
What do you do at birthdays, Christmas and celebrations things to make it sustainable? We used to end up with a huge pile of wrapping paper every birthday and Christmas but now we have very little as we have swapped to reusable wraps and bags. At Christmas the amount of wrapping paper thrown away atContinue reading “Sustainable wins: Fabric Wrapping”
Sustainable fashion show needs your outfits
Do you upcycle clothes and fabrics to create outfits or mend your own clothes? We are looking for your upcycled and repaired clothes to feature in EalingSewnUp Sustainable fashion show & swap in October at Gunnersbury Museum.
Fabric Swap and Sale
Come along and get some fabric at Days for Girls swap and sale on Sunday 10 July from 2.30 until 5.00 pm, at Northfields Community Centre, Ealing. Bring as much or as little fabric you want to swap. For the fabric and items you bring along, you will receive tokens (or you can buy tokens)Continue reading “Fabric Swap and Sale”
Sewing machine Servicing and Care
We get a lot of enquiries about sewing machine care and lessons. Many have a sewing machine that has been put away and not confident how to use it or its not working. So here’s some guidance and recommendations for businesses that will service your machines. We also have listed places that you can buyContinue reading “Sewing machine Servicing and Care”
Cleaning your iron
Ealing Repair Cafe has a travel iron that was kindly donated for our sessions but it has gained marks on it. Yvonne, who volunteers at our sessions has a great and simple solution, paracetamol. Yvonne makes beautiful quilts and discovered this through one of her groups, as quilting can use a lot of starch onContinue reading “Cleaning your iron”
London Repair Week for Ealing Repair cafe
It’s London Repair Week and Ealing Repair cafe has been chosen as #Localrepairheros and have a few events we are helping people to learn how to mend and patch their clothes. We have put together some basic sewing kits and written up a sewing kit guide. We will be at: Friday, 18 March, 11 am – 3 pm Acton Market,Continue reading “London Repair Week for Ealing Repair cafe”
Books on repairing and alterations
These are a selection of mending books along to our Ealing Repair Cafe sessions. Each has a review of what the book covers.
Laundry washing products: Green Washing or Greenwashing?
I have been thinking I should change from my supermarket non bio which although comes in a cardboard box may not have the best ingredients. I discovered this brilliant analysis on laundry powders as weighs up ingredients from various brands out there. When referring to Ethical Consumer magazine, we noticed that some of the ‘NewContinue reading “Laundry washing products: Green Washing or Greenwashing?”
Ealing Repair Cafe 