The Fifth Mark of Mission in the Anglican Church is: To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth.
At Wallsend Upcycling our vision is to play our part by reducing textile waste that goes to landfill. We give a new life to second hand clothes and linen by making them into new products – handbags, pet beds, scrunchies and more.

How we started

St Luke’s Op Shop has a huge variety of clothes and linen and we could see that there was an opportunity to use some of the excess and some of the damaged items. We were lucky to receive donations from two elderly ladies who no longer had a use for their sewing equipment. With plenty of haberdashery items and a couple of sewing machines we were ready to get started. All our items are unique as we are using second hand material from our op shop. We wash all our materials, but with the environment in mind, we use a quick wash and a full day drying in the sun. We work in a room within the op shop and as soon as our products are made they go back out to the op shop for sale.

 Our products

One of our first items was the jeans handbag. Made from a pair of jeans, one of the legs is used to make the strap. The lining is often made from a shirt or dress. 

There is plenty of denim left over and this has been put to use making pouffes, door stops and a draft excluder. These are filled with textile waste. Scraps of denim can even be used to make feather bookmarks.
Coloured denim gives us opportunities for more colour combinations. 

We make table mats using t-shirts and these can also be continued upwards to make a basket.

 Our pet beds are made using a sweatshirt and filled with textile waste.

 Bunting is made with a variety of fabrics and comes with a small storage bag. The standard bunting says ‘Happy Birthday’ and is about 2 ½ to 3 m long. We are happy to add a name for a small extra cost, or to change the greeting, or to make it longer and have no greeting.

All our products are available for sale during op shop hours (Tues – Fri 10am – 2pm, Sat 9am – 12pm) but if you want to request something specific, call in on a Thursday or leave a message at the church office and we will call you back.