MMU Futures - Upcylcing WorkShop Wed 3rd Sept 2014

April 08, 2015

As you all know I am starting a Top Up Degree course at MMU in a few weeks time but before I start, the MMU Futures have set up a few different welcome events for any new or current students to attend. At these event students can meet new people, get a feel for the place and learn something new. I decided to book myself onto an Upcylcing Workshop which was a free event running on Wednesday 3rd September, the workshop was only for a half day and finished at 1pm.

Well to start off getting up at 7am was a killer after all my lie in's over summer then i got on the wrong train and was mega early! This was a great start to the day but anyway after sitting in the park outside uni for nearly 40 mins reading a Kerrang Magazine i went into the building and got lost finding the semiar room that the workshop was in, this took another 15 mins of walking around the 3rd floor and walking into a building site on that floor. Finally i found room 309 and the workshop began not long after.

There was just a few of us to start with then a few late comers arrived so over all there was around 15 of us all mostly girls but a few boys turned up too. In my process of getting lost finding the room i bumped into a girl also doing the workshop called Lauren she was very nice and was coming to MMU to study Textiles so like me she had an idea about up cycling, sewing, fashion and Textiles.

To start the workshop we was shown a video about what MMU futures actually do, they run different events, workshops and experience days. Each time a student goes to any of these events they gain future points which add up until the end of the year and a futures award is awarded at the end. For this workshop i attended I will gain 3 future points towards am award.

I am going to keep an eye on what other events they are running and try to attend some more to gain more points and experience for the future. Il keep you updated on any event I go to.

After the video the practitioners that was running the workshop arrived (they was running late due to traffic), basically they explained what we would be doing and we all got stuck in. The 2 women was founders of a company called Stitched Up which is in South Manchester and they run Upcylcing workshops regularly and there's a second hand/recycled shop too.

They had brought all equipment, materials, fabrics and embellishments with them so I didn't need to take anything, MMU had also provided 2 sewing machines.

Starting off I wasn't sure what to actually made or upcycle, there was t-shirts and fabrics to choose from so I had a good root though them and luckily found some Batman fabric, the fabric was blue and white striped and reminded me of crime scene tape. The practitioner Alice had found a cut off from a t-shirt that had cameras on it and asked if anyone had done photography as this may be of interest to them so I took that. Having the batman fabric and camera print fabric inspired me to make a crime scene theme Batman bag.

I used the Batman fabric and folded it in half so I had a rectangular shape with one open side (top of bag), I then cut out 2 of the cameras printed on the t-shirt jersey fabric and arranged them onto the front of the bag, I also added a yellow zip as an embellishment along with some black and yellow stripe fabric. I used 1 piece of the yellow stripe fabric to make a flash for one of the cameras, I used a fan folding event to achieve this and attached a laser cut button to the front of the flash.

To make the straps for the bag I cut black coloured t-shirt jersey fabric into strips and pinned 3 together then plaited them, I repeated this step so I had 2 straps or handles for the bag.

Sewing all this together was a bit of an issue, since there was only 2 sewing machines everyone was waiting to use them and when I eventually got on a machine there wasn't any black thread so I just used blue. Me and the sewing machine was getting along so after much patience with the machine I decided to hand sew the rest of the bag.

As a last minute feature I drew and cut out a Batman symbol stencil by folding a piece of paper in half, drawing half a batman logo using google as a reference, cutting out the bat then un-folding the paper making a full bat. I next pinned this to the black t-shirt fabric and carefully cut out a bat, this was very tedious work. After cutting out the bat I hand sewed it to the bag with embroidery thread.

Over all I am happy with the bag although I didn't finish all the sewing at the workshop, I had a good enjoyable day and met some new people and had a good laugh.

I was only able to take a few photographs as I was busy sewing but here they are anyway. Photo of the bag as well ...