One of the highlights of my weekend in the Isle of Wight was two women sewing in the window of the RNLI charity shop! Yes I know, I'm seriously sad, but this event incorporated so many of my favourite things, it was inevitable it would catch my imagination! Let's see, we had crafting, environmental issues, and a healthy dose of the famous English eccentricity all bound into one.
These two brave souls spent the day in the window of the charity shop in aid of a very good cause - to rid Ventnor of its plastic bags. They were making Morsbags out of recycled fabrics (old duvet covers, curtains, sheets etc) that had been donated to the cause. Anyone buying anything in the charity shop got to choose a bag for free, or you could give a donation instead.
I was totally thrilled by the idea, particularly that they were doing their campaigning in such a visible and imaginative way. Sewing in the shop window was so close to the whole knitting in public thing that I felt really drawn to their campaign. Not that I need any encouragement of course - the Curse will confirm that I am an avid collector of fabric bags, and every time he accompanies me down the high street for a shopping trip, he has to listen to my little refrain 'Don't bother with a bag thanks, I've brought my own!' over and over again. I am quite tempted to try a similar campaign in Deptford, perhaps I could get sponsorship from the sewing machine shop at the end of the road?!
Anyway, the Knit Nurse's collection of slightly grubby and stained fabric bags has just been augmented still further by this rather gaudy but pleasingly pristine example.
If you get a chance, do pop over to the Ventbag blog to offer a few words of encouragement. There is a report about the event, and a short interview with the organiser, on the Ventnor Blog here.
There's also a short interview with me....! Have a laugh at it here. You might just be able to hear the excitement in my voice...!
3 comments:
Hiya, this is Angie, mad woman on the left in your picture. Love the piece you wrote about the sewathon, made my day, I have always wanted to be eccentric, although a couple of friends have said that I achieved that quite a few years ago.
We gave out 116 morsbags made from recycled fabric and the RNLI got just over £48 in donations as well as all the extra goods that they sold, Sheila and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it, brilliant to talk to so many people who were 100% behind what we were doing. The RNLI are very keen for us to do another one, we will in 2- 3 months but need to start getting a huge stock of bags ready for it. We have already had one person who wants to come and knit bags at the next one that we do, if you are on the Island come and join in, will let you know the date.
We have a lady who used to design knitting patterns and write knitting books designing us our very own knitted bag pattern, as soon as it is ready it will be announced on our site http://ventbag.wordpress.com/
If you want to get people in your area sewing bags as well, check out the morsbags.com site as there are over 100 'pods' making these bags all over the country already and there might be one near you.
Going to get back to knitting my string bag, I need a break from sewing.
Thanks for your comments Angie, I love it when the internet can bring things together like that!
Thank you for the idea. Brilliant. I passed it on to Sue Ryder, who have a shop locally, and they say they don't know why somebody hadn't thought of it before.
Christina
Banchory bags Campaign
Post a Comment