I attended my first ever Swish event last Sunday. After investigating I have found a number of craft and clothes related Swish events all around the country; get Googling for an event near you.
The idea is you pay a small entrance fee and bring a collection of craft items (or clothes) with you at a specified time. After the 'drop-off' there is time for a cup of tea whilst the organisers sort through the donations. Next is the exciting bit where you are invited back into the space for a browsing period and then finally once the Swish is formally open you get to select anything you fancy and take it home free of charge! Nifty and eco-friendly!
The event I went to was organised by the lovely Sonia from the
London Craft Club at Cecil House by Regent's Park in London. I gathered a whole bunch of art and craft materials I no longer used and took home a number of lovely fabrics and zips. You get the idea if you watch this
video taken at the event (where you can briefly see me with my big grey bag!).
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| My stash of unused art, craft and sewing supplies for the Big Craft Swish |
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| The very polite browsing part of the Swish |
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| Sonia from London Craft Club explaining the respectful 'rules' of a Swish event |
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| I met the lovely Kara (@Kara22jay) who had donated some gorgeous tweed that I acquired |
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| Nice to catch up with Megan (PigeonWishes) who was checking out the knitting stash |
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| My collection of Swished stuff. I was super happy with a scrap of my favourite Uniko Marimekko fabric! |
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| The bottle green fabric is about 3 metres of very wide linen! Behind is a lovely Orla Kiely-esque furnishing weight cotton. |
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| Colourful zips for miles! |
Future Swish Events Links:
What a great idea! Love it when things find a good home elsewhere:)
ReplyDeleteYes it was nice to get rid of unused craft stuff although I think it is almost impossible to return home without something to replace it with - I was determined NOT to bring back stuff but it is just too tempting to walk past such lovely free things!
DeleteThis looks like so much fun and a great opportunity to exchange some of those things you probably won't use. I wish there was one of these events in the Midlands.
ReplyDeleteHi Rosemary, follow some of the links above and I think they tell you about Swish's around the country.
DeleteWhat lovely fabrics you found! And I'm sure all those zips will be very useful. Sorry I couldn't make it, will keep an eye out for others as I could probably do with a bit of de-stashing.
ReplyDeleteHi Alex, yes the zips are for the many little bags I have been making recently. It's a shame you couldn't come but there will always be another one. Actually, in Chiswick on 24th Feb there is a Swish if you fancy that?
DeleteThat sounds fun! I had considered going to that but we had no trains into London last weekend. Nice fabric you picked up!
ReplyDeleteIt was lots of fun Tamsin - I'm sure there will be another one soon.
DeleteSo happy you blogged about this - have been thinking about fabric swaps and the like. Thanks for the links for future ones!
ReplyDeleteNo worries Kate. It was such a fab event. I would defo go to another one!
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