By Bernadette Noll (of Future Craft Collective and Slow Family Living), AMMF core crafter lead.
With just over a month until the 2nd annual Austin Mini Maker Faire, we are gearing up big time to get everything in order. This year I am in charge of the Mega Clothes Swap and I am super excited about it! Since my initial Maker Faire exposure over 5 years ago I have been running a version of the clothes swap at my kids’ school at Zilker elementary along with many able and willing volunteers. If you’ve been you know how amazing it is. And for the Maker Faire swap, we’re taking the clothes swap to a whole ‘nuther level.
While we will still be taking clothes of all varieties, and we will still be encouraging people to find garments they like, the Maker Faire swap will also be focusing on textile crafts that will utilize the giant piles of garments that accumulate.
We will need LOTS of VOLUNTEERS to help the swap run smoothly and remember, when you volunteer as swap runner, you get first dibs on the garments! Lucky.
If you have a PROJECT you’d like to do, we are definitely looking for more ideas to make things with the mountains of garments that will surely come our way.
We will have all sorts of projects, some of which are still to be decided and others which are already in the preparation stages. Some of the amazing crafts going on will be t-shirt bags, fabric collage, yarn from t-shirts, a community weaving project, screen-printing, appliques, crowns, and so much more!
If you’re coming to the Faire, be sure to bring your CLEAN clothes to add to the piles. We are especially seeking T-SHIRTS and especially in lots of great colors. Of course for the bags, we’ll use them all, but for the yarn, we’d love colors.
We are also seeking 100% WOOL garments in all stages of disrepair. If you can get those to me ahead of time, email me at bernadettenoll at gmail dot com and we’ll discuss a mass pick-up.
If you want to bring the wool on the day of, we would love for you to felt them up in a hot, high agitation wash cycle.
But don’t let this list limit your selections. This is a swap and we welcome all your cast-off clothing items. As always, our motto is…
BRING WHAT YOU CAN. TAKE WHAT YOU NEED…
And….
MAKE COOL STUFF!!!
P.S. We are also seeking sponsors for our amazing Swap so if you know of a company that would be a good match, please send them my way…. bernadettenoll at gmail dot com.