[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]“Something beautiful. Something good. All my confusion He understood.” These words from the old song come to mind at the last Sew Good Party on Saturday, 9 March.
12 people (predominantly ladies, apart from a U-turn Life Change champion and Michael, a professional fashion designer and an intern pattern maker for BAM Boutique) gathered to craft material, once regarded as scrap, into beautiful patchwork quilt blankets. Some for full size beds and others for baby blankets.
Some were experienced quilters and some were novices but each person had a role to play and there were many new skills learned along the way. Some were brought along by friends, whilst others had seen news about it on our Facebook page or heard about it at a recent talk.
There was the gentle ‘whiz’ of the sewing machines, the interaction and laughter and chatter as individuals talked, asked for help or simply got to know one another. Overall there was the collective vibe, of achieving something positive together.
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On arrival jobs were assigned. Some were given a kit with squares of material already cut to size and the pins and thread needed to sew these together. Others trimmed squares of fabric using a roller cutter and a templet in order to maintain an even size. The squares were then pinned together ready for sewing into long strips. These strips were then sewn together and a border added. The final stage was to add the backing fabric. When I referred to this as recycling I was firmly told it is not recycling but ‘Upcycling’. The finished product will then be sold in one of the U-turn Charity shops to raise funds to support the work of reaching out to those still living on the streets.
In many ways the project reflected the U-turn work of reaching out to the homeless in order to upskill them into useful members of our community. As the next two lines of the song says, “All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife, but He made something beautiful of my life.” So true of many of those U-turn works with.
At U-turn we are privileged to see lives transformed. We see people who have for numerous reasons ended up living on the streets of Cape Town but who have with the help of U-turn been able to turn their lives around and to be ‘upcycled’ into transformed members of society.
Thank you to all those who were part of the Sew Good Party.
If you missed this one, please sign up below for notifications of the next one, so that you can add your skills to the work.
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