Coffee with Second Stitch

Market Lane: Can you tell us a bit about Second Stitch? 

Second Stitch: We’re mostly a not-for-profit training organisation. We educate women from diverse backgrounds – originally, we only worked with migrants and asylum seekers – and we’re part of a larger non-profit called VICSEG New Futures, who’ve been around for over 40 years.

VICSEG originally started working with women to help them find community and services upon arrival in Australia. They soon started offering them training in family daycare services. Not long after that, they started diversifying their audience and training offering. 

Second Stitch was launched eight years ago, initially as a sewing circle. A lot of the women who use VICSEG services come from countries where textiles are very prominent. They asked about creating a sewing circle, and VICSEG decided it was something worthwhile doing. Soon, staff from VICSEG started to come and have their clothing mended at Second Stitch. And so eventually we also became a social enterprise for alterations and mending, with a garment production team as well.   
 

How do people hear about you?

Some of it is through word of mouth, through previous students. And a lot of the people who sign up for our courses have already done other courses through VICSEG and they’re wanting to do something a bit more for themselves. They want to learn to sew to help their families, but they also want to sew for themselves because it’s creative and meditative and, when they’re here, it’s social as well.

Sewing is a skill a lot of people want to learn. It’s an important, valuable skill. We all wear garments, so it’s good to know how to do a little sewing, at least. People often don’t understand the value of the construction of their clothes until they come to a class and they realise how complex it is, and how much there is to learn.  

What are the values that underpin what Second Stitch does? 

Officially, we say ‘community.’ But really what we say to each other is that we’re family. We respect each other and care about each other. We share and we look after each other. The students call this their happy place, and their safe place. This is like their other home.    
 

Do you get a lot of donations? 

We do. We get donations of fabrics, sewing machines and overlockers. If the machines are useful for training and work in the studio, we’ll hold onto them, but most of the time they go to students. As soon as we have a new class come in, there’ll be students that don’t have equipment at home. We can pretty much give them a sewing machine straight away but overlockers are rarer, so people go on a waiting list for a while until they can get one.

We also get industrial sewing machines donated to us. The reason they’re getting donated is that, while they’re valuable to us, their value in the community has dropped because few people have these skills anymore. They were usually owned by migrant workers who might have sewn from home on an industrial sewing machine and are no longer interested or perhaps too old to use it now. So, we inherit them, and our community makes good use of them.  

We’re very excited about the tote bag repair service we’re offering in partnership with Second Stitch! Are repairs a big part of what you do? 

Yes! It’s a big part of what we do, and we’re really proud of our fantastic online reviews! We have some very exacting local clients, who only buy high-quality, locally made clothing, and want them repaired to a very high standard. And we’re happy to do a great job for them, and to see them keep bringing new garments in to be mended by our team. It’s a good feeling.  
 

What role, if any, does coffee play in your studio day to day? 

An important role! We have a really good relationship with a cafe around the corner. So, we get good coffee from them, and they have their alterations done with us. 

Are there any future plans or goals for Second Stitch that you’re particularly excited about? 

We’re always growing. We currently offer a Cert 3 and we’re about to launch a Cert 4. We’d like to further develop the training program, so we can have students come in and learn more about the production or alteration side of things. It’s a retiring workforce, the textile industry, but there are still people making clothing in Australia, and there’s still a demand for Australian-made apparel. We want to help protect and perpetuate that, so it doesn’t all get driven overseas.

We also have a dream to have our students’ work for sale in our shop on a consignment basis, with the idea that it will also help them understand what a consignment shop is. We want to give them help setting up websites, Instagrams, taking photos, and dealing with consignment paperwork, so they can then go and approach other businesses to sell their items as well.

And of course we want to keep growing our alterations services. We’re so lucky with our alterations that we get to help the community – we get to mend their garments so they can keep using them and extend the lifespan of the items they love.