Sew What?

Activities: Today was our second day in Atlanta, and this time, we helped out at the Initiative for Affordable Housing. The Initiative for Affordable Housing is a non-profit organization which takes donated clothes and fabrics and recycles them in order to make new rugs, bags, scarves, etc. (with a focus on making new rugs). Lisa, the head supervisor of the whole place, showed us around the different facilities of the initiative. We met another lady named Rhonda, who was in charge of cutting cloth and rolling it into balls for the weavers to make into different items. After we spoke with Rhonda, we met a man named Fred who seemed to be one of the more experienced hands behind the looms. He showed us the process of taking cloth that was rolled by Rhonda and her volunteers and weaving it to make different items. After we were introduced to the different processes that go into making new items, we went back upstairs to help Rhonda cut the cloths up and roll them up into balls. After doing that for a few hours, we had to go, but we told them we would come back tomorrow and help out some more. We’re probably going to work with the looms next time around.

Takeaways: Although I didn’t see a much deeper meaning in today’s work like I did yesterday, I did like the way Lisa and co. treated us today. They were very open to answering any questions that we had about the process of cutting/rolling the cloths up and if that still wasn’t enough, they would actually do some of it for us in order to demonstrate. They never showed any signs of being annoyed or tired of us despite the mistakes that we made (since it was our first time doing something like this). They were very understanding of the fact that we were new to the process and we were just looking to help the community. I was also very fond of the way our trip leaders treated us. They answered our questions in the same friendly manner as Lisa and they helped keep the job fun by passing the time with fun conversations. Overall, I was very pleased with everything that happened today and look forward to going back tomorrow.

-Geri