Learning to sew to reuse your own clothes: a rising sustainable trend
Eva Sánchez, a graduate in pattern making, industrial scaling, and dressmaking with a specialty in haute couture, opens the doors of her academy, EVASÉ, located in the Sant Gervasi district of Barcelona. After overcoming a personal crisis, she made a 180-degree professional turn and set a new direction in her life, focusing on one of her passions, fashion. She left her job at Fundació La Caixa and started in sewing: “due to personal circumstances, I realized that I no longer fit in that world. I signed up for sewing classes, it was therapy for me because it allowed me to connect better with myself. I noticed it aligned more with my sensitivity. Working in large teams was not easy for me, here I set my own pace and can dedicate time to achieve the quality I seek”. At first, for Eva, sewing was a way to relax and escape from her worries, “it requires a lot of concentration and that means you can't think about anything else while you're engaged in the activity. It distracts and calms you, it's like a meditation class and on top of that, you're creating something yourself! It's fascinating!”
Eva specializes in custom-made fashion. In 2019, she began teaching sewing classes, which awakened something in her, akin to the passion for her profession. Her desire is to convey and share her knowledge so that everyone can create something with their own hands and feel the immense satisfaction and pride of seeing the result and wearing it: “What I enjoy most about my job is helping people carry out their own projects and seeing the satisfaction they feel after having made something themselves. I realized that I had a knack for teaching, which is why I decided to open the academy. I believe that this has something to do with my previous job at the Fundació La Caixa, where helping others has always been something that fulfilled me.”
Eva's academy is located in a spacious area at Plató street number 6 in Barcelona, which rents us: “the location for me was key and the brightness of the place was also very important for drafting patterns. The place is ideal and evokes tranquility. To take my first steps, I relied on Núñez i Navarro, I had heard very good things about their customer service, their reliability, and they also advised me throughout the process to condition the site”.
He decided to open the academy in the city of Barcelona because he saw a market niche he could fill. Upon researching, he realized that there weren't many places in the city where one could learn to sew: “right now, if you want professional sewing studies there are only a couple of places, and for amateur pattern making there are also very few. Most sewing workshops are focused on patchwork and not on garment making. At my academy, we offer more possibilities, and in this neighborhood, I found that there was nothing similar”.
Sewing is an early vocation that Eva always had, she believes it is important in childhood to try and take courses to decide what you like and thus be able to start developing and discovering a passion: “I would have liked to have learned to sew when I was young, I have been quite self-taught until I enrolled in professionalization courses to get a diploma in industrial pattern making with tailoring, specializing in haute couture”. For Eva, knowing how to sew is about survival “I think that people, at least once in their life, should have contact with sewing”. Normally we associate it with something old, but it is currently booming. The trend of reusing garments to give them a second life is very much in vogue, to make a piece of clothing many resources are allocated that have a negative impact on the environment and the planet, therefore, more and more people try to remake their own clothes to reuse them, it is an excellent choice for personal sustainability.
Taking this step in the middle of her professional career and making a radical change is something Eva does not regret: “when you are where you want to be you think: Why didn't I do this sooner? With perspective, you see the importance of all the stages you go through, I have managed to love and value them because thanks to them I have gotten here”.
At her academy, she offers weekly sewing and pattern-making courses, as well as an 8-hour basic sewing course. In September, she will offer intensive workshops for those who are not available during the week. In the summer, she organizes various classes for minors from 9 to 16 years old, in the mornings and afternoons. Additionally, she also rents out the space and sewing machines for those who do not have room at home and wish to use the facilities. Another service offered is custom pattern-making; you can order a pattern and learn to sew it in the academy's classes, or on your own. The Evasé Academy is a meeting point that offers a wide range of possibilities to develop your most creative side.
We congratulate Eva for her initiative, we find it positive to have her example as the protagonist of the stories behind our clients at Núñez i Navarro.
