Plastic Free July Update

At stitch o mat we wanted to join the movement of plastic free July as a way to support people to rethink the way they use plastics and offer ‘plastic free’ solution.
The easiest way to make change is what we use to transport food in. Daily lunch boxes are a great focus. Stitch-o- Mat ran simple workshops on making sandwiches bags and beeswax wraps. This spend into the local school.
 South New Brighton School term topic was on sustainability, they asked us to run sewing workshops with the students as part of this.  We started sewing sandwich bags and making beeswax wraps with 50 students from 7-8 year group. This was then followed by the 3-4 year group sewing for 2 days during the last week of the school term.

During the holiday we were touched by kids from South Brighton School bringing their parents into Stitch o mat to make more sandwiches, some sewing sewing at home.
🌻 School hols... asked my boys what they wanted to do. Make sandwich bags was their reply. Fun and sustainable. Proud of them and their drive to use less plastics. 🌻

​We were then blown away by a message from Lynley Duffull who works at Morningside Kids care in whangarei.

“I would like to thank you for your sandwich bag tutorial. I have now made 97 of these for the kids that attend my Before and After School care programme to celebrate Plastic Free July.”

The Tuesday night workshops at Stitch-o- mat have been choker. People travelling from around Christchurch city to make produce bags, sandwich bags and experience the process of making beeswax wrap.

We also run electric sewing for the  Christchurch City Council Kids Fest. Working in other artist from Te Kura Tawhito, The Old School we participated in the Mata Riki community workshops for the More FM Mata Riki lantern parade. We created Iganga ( whitebait ) inspired wands. Using conductive thread we were able to get the kids to sew a circuit board onto their felt cut-out to the shape of a whitebait. This Conductive thread leads to a LED light.
This was a nice thing to share with the kids that they can make and create their own lanterns and not need to buy cheap plastic ones.
It was lovely to watch the Iganga take on their own colors schemes and patterns which reflected the child who made them.

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