Rochester diocese’s sewing and fiber arts affiliate fosters community, education, creation care

[Episcopal News Service] The Rev. Georgia Carney worked in professional costume construction for more than 30 years before becoming a deacon. While studying for the diaconate, she spent time mending people’s clothes at Gleaners Community Kitchen at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Canandaigua, New York, in the Diocese of Rochester. She also considered how to apply her talents to ministry.

“Where do my skills meet the world’s greatest needs? As a deacon, I’m always looking at serving the last and the least,” Carney told Episcopal News Service.

As a deacon, Carney’s been active in various ministries, including ministries focused on sewing and mending. Those ministries eventually led to the founding of SewGreen@Rochester in 2015, an independent nonprofit seeded by a $30,000 domestic poverty ministry grant from The Episcopal Church.

Located on Rochester’s underserved west side, Carney said SewGreen@Rochester is a place that brings people from all economic, racial, ethnic and educational backgrounds together.

“Through this ministry, we are building relationships across all kinds of what we conceive as barriers,” said Carney, like affordability or small business development. 

SewGreen@Rochester focuses on three core tenets: community, creativity and sustainability. The nonprofit offers free workshops and low-cost sewing, knitting, crochet and needlework classes for children and adults. It also serves as a meeting place for people to gather and craft together, offering free access to its machines, notions (buttons, pins, hooks) and patterns. Visitors also can ask the part-time staff and volunteers for help with their projects and for mending assistance. Oftentimes, groups use SewGreen@Rochester’s space and materials to create handmade goods, such as cat beds and cat toys for the local animal shelter, and pouches with neck bands for homeless people, as a way to contribute to the community. 

“This has really become a ‘third place’ for a lot of folks to socialize, which is something important we’d been lacking from the pandemic but have now returned to,” Carney said. “You need a ‘third place’ where you can really feel safe.”

 “Third place” refers to locations separate from home and work – places of worship, cafes, libraries, parks and community centers, etc. – that encourage social interaction and community building. Having a “third place” to visit regularly and relax in can help reduce loneliness and improve mental health.

SewGreen@Rochester is mostly run by volunteers, but it employs four part-time staff members, including Jane Beck, who teaches some of the classes, including quilting, embroidery and others. Individual classes cost $15, and the annual two-week Fearless Fashion Camp costs $100, though scholarships are available for those who can’t afford to pay full price. All materials are included with classes and workshops.

Beck, whose mother was a seamstress, told ENS that many clients who enroll in classes say they forgot or never learned the sewing and crafting skills their mothers and grandmothers had. It’s a “big deal,” she said, because art and family and consumer science programs in schools have been dwindling in recent years.

“Learning how to sew and knit and other skills gives people, especially a lot of kids today, the confidence to do things on their own. We recently had a middle school teacher come in and tell us that so many middle school children cannot properly use scissors because they haven’t done so since kindergarten or first grade,” she said. “Teaching young people these necessary skills not only continues traditions that have existed for thousands of years, but beyond that, they really feel proud of themselves for accomplishing something, like making a pillow or a bag.”

SewGreen@Rochester receives diocesan grants annually, as well as money from individual Episcopal parishes in the diocese, which help pay for operating costs, the part-time staff and interns. All SewGreen@Rochester’s sewing machines, fabric, yarn and other materials come from donations throughout the community. The nonprofit in turn uses the materials for classes and to sell at low cost.

Donated sewing machines are also available for people to purchase or use for free inside the shop. Carney said many of the people who buy or borrow the sewing machines are refugees from Afghanistan who already know how to sew, but “they just need access.”

SewGreen@Rochester is also available for people to bring in their broken sewing machines for repairs at low cost.

The nonprofit also keeps textiles out of landfills. More than 92 million tons of textile waste from fast fashion wind up in landfills annually, according to the World Wildlife Fund. SewGreen@Rochester, however, strives to be a part of the solution by donating, repairing and recycling textile products, which help reduce waste and greenhouse emissions. In 2023, the ministry received more than seven tons of donated fabrics, notions, yarns and sewing machines.

“That’s how much we kept out of the landfill last year,” Beck said.

The fast fashion industry, which is a major source of water consumption and water pollution, is responsible for 2-8% of global carbon emissions, according to the World Resources Institute.

Carney said her experience with mending zippers has made her think more intentionally about textile sustainability.

“Let’s say you have a zipper that won’t work on your jacket; you don’t know how to fix it yourself and you can’t afford a tailor to fix that zipper. Where’s the jacket going? Straight to the landfill,” Carney said. “If you can master a skill like sewing a zipper, you can really empower yourself while helping to protect the environment.”

Beck, who is Jewish, said SewGreen@Rochester’s mission is in line with the Jewish concept tikkun olam, Hebrew for “repairing the world.”

“The end product of our efforts is all the same,” she said. “Our motivations may be framed differently, but I love what we do here at SewGreen@Rochester, and I love the people who come in.”

“We’ve got to get the church out of the church, and SewGreen@Rochester is one way we’ve been able to do just that,” Carney said.

— Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service based in northern Indiana. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.