Cashmere's Repair Cafe: Stitching community together while reducing waste

CASHMERE– The chatter of sewing machines and laughter echoed throughout one of Cashmere’s oldest buildings as locals gathered at Eastside Rebuild for a monthly Repair Cafe. 

Organized by Waste Loop, a Cashmere-based, sustainability-focused non-profit, the Repair Cafes aim to connect members of the community through a shared need to fix broken belongings and reduce local waste. From clothes with holes to fidgety blenders, the central goal of each Repair Cafe is to foster an atmosphere of practical and fun education between locals, leaving participants with fresh skills, new friends, and fond memories.

Waste Loop’s Education and Outreach Manager, Amanda Close, further explained the free public event’s focus on sharing knowledge between local residents.   

“Our hope is that someone’s interested in learning, like, ‘how could I repair this next time,’” Close mentioned. “And our volunteers will be able to share that knowledge with them so that, potentially, that repair could happen in the home if someone wasn’t able to make it to the event.” 

Close deeply enjoys organizing the Repair Cafes and helping to connect community members through a common interest in learning, repairing, and reusing.

“It just brings me so much joy to see people coming together and sharing with each other skills that are just so important,” She said with a smile, “skills that are not really taught in school these days, but are just important for life.”

Local sewers stood by to assist attendees with clothing repairs, manned their machines, and chatted away as they worked on clothes and DIY projects. 

Upper Valley local, Amy Massey, worked diligently on one of the Repair Cafe’s DIY prompts while she waited to help, cutting and sewing animal feed bags to create high-quality repurposed tote bags.

“It’s so fun to see how delighted people are when you can fix their favorite shirt or their favorite pants,” Massey said of participating in Waste Loop’s Repair Cafes.

Sewing next to Massey, volunteer sewer Virginia White agreed with her, adding that the inclusion of fun, creative prompts like the tote bag project draws her in and inspires her.

“I love also getting to be creative, but with a little prompt,” she explained. “Sometimes it’s hard to come up on your own with how you want to be creative, but they have all these feed bags and somebody came up with the prompt to turn them into tote bags. Now, we get to be creative and do color options and all that stuff with something prompting us. So, it’s a good creative outlet that also allows you to interact with others and meet new people.” 

Looking to the future, Waste Loop plans to continue hosting their Repair Cafes at Cashmere’s Eastside Rebuild on the first Wednesday of each month while hoping to provide more educational resources across the region. As Education and Outreach Manager Close describes, Waste Loop aims to continue this drive for public sustainability knowledge by teaching the next generations of local residents. 

“I’m excited to work more with the schools and getting youth involved with this movement… I did a pilot project with the alternative high school, the Discovery School, and students learned how to do bike repair. It was super fun, super awesome, and I’m very stoked to try and continue that work and be able to share with more student populations.” 

As clothes tear and small appliances malfunction throughout the month, Waste Loop urges residents to save them. Instead of throwing out repairable items to waste away in a landfill, hold onto them for the first Wednesday of the month, and bring them to a friendly fixer who can share simple secrets to maintaining those prized possessions. 

Visit wasteloop.org to learn more about Repair Cafes, Eastside Rebuild, Waste Loop, and their many other events. 

Will Nilles: (509) 731-3211 or will@ward.media