(bright music) - Will you consider this?

My guest has a ton of information about her sensational idea, which is called Sewsation.

And I mean, she's got a million tons of information.

But first of all, this is Diane Lewis of Sewsation.

And first of all, let's start up, where'd you come from?

You're not a native Peorian?

- No, I'm not a native Peorian.

I originally, I'm from Chicago, South Loop, and, but yeah, over five years ago I was living in Chicago.

When COVID hit, my husband and I, we came here to be with my oldest daughter who was in medical school.

And, but while at home I was thinking, "Gosh, what am I gonna do?"

You know, the job?

No, no one was hiring.

- [Christine] Right.

You couldn't go anywhere.

- Couldn't go anywhere.

Except for medical students and doctors.

So one mind just said, "Why not go to school?"

And it was always my dream to go back to college.

- All right.

- And so that's what I did.

I started taking classes at ICC, and then two years ago I transferred over to Bradley.

And so I'm there today.

- And you're a non-traditional student?

- Yes.

- And an honor student at that.

Congratulations.

- [Diane] Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

So in your class, you took a sustainability class.

Now what does that involve?

- Okay, the title of the class was Sustainability in the Apparel Industry.

And what it involved was learning all about the apparel industry, how clothes are made, actually, how cotton is grown, polyester is made.

Actually, 60% of our clothing is made from polyester, which is actually crude oil.

And cotton, of course, there's a ton of pesticides in growing cotton.

With one t-shirt, did you know, there's actually, they need 720 gallons of water to make one t-shirt.

- To make one t-shirt?

Oh, wow.

- I mean, that's actually three years worth of water for one person.

- Wow.

- I mean, amazing.

- [Christine] It is truly amazing.

- Yes.

- And t-shirts are so cheap, but they're a hundred percent cotton.

So you wanna buy organic cotton, if anything, right?

- [Diane] Right.

That's true.

- But same thing probably takes as much water to process organic cotton.

- That's true.

That's really in the farming stage of it.

But yes, of a ton of water, natural resources.

I mean, it takes a lot to make clothing.

And it was just fascinating to hear that side of how clothes and fabrics are made.

- So then you decided that there's too much waste because there's also 11 and a half million tons.

- Yes.

- Not just pounds, tons of clothing that goes into landfills in the United States alone every year.

- Yes.

That is correct.

Americans throw away that amount of clothing each year.

And I just knew that, with having over 30 years sewing experience, I could do something about it.

But really what struck a chord was really learning about, not just how fabric is made, it's about the human aspect of it.

I mean, there's people who have to process the cotton, which has a lot of pesticides.

There's people who actually have to go into the manufacturing of polyester material, I mean, which is made of cruel oil.

And they have to smell that.

I mean, of course they, they claim they use something in order to help with the smell of it, you know, putting on masks and so forth.

But still, people in the neighborhood, there are reports that yeah, they're still affected, people who work in the factories and the surrounding areas of the factories.

- [Christine] Just the chemicals alone.

- [Diane] The chemicals alone.

- Well, and all those clothing and tons of clothing going into the landfill.

And then all of that is breaking down and getting into our soil.

- That is correct.

Of course, they try to, you know, line the landfills as much as possible.

But again, the people who manage, or the companies who manage the landfills have to manage them, can 30 years even after they close.

So say it's the landfills, you know, they're filling up with waste and clothing, of course.

But even after they close, they still have to manage it to make sure that none of the, how should I say, the liquid flows from the landfill, goes into the ground- - And not into the water table.

- And not into the water tanks.

They have to manage them.

- Interesting.

So, so you had a class, was there a contest or this was a class assignment to come up with an idea of how to fix this problem, how to address this problem of waste, of trash?

- Well, actually, as you mentioned, there wasn't a contest from the start.

But what happened, after I heard about all the atrocities that happens on that side of the fence, of how you make the clothes- - The manufacturing.

- And the fabric, the manufacturing, then I said, okay, I knew something, I could do something about it with having over 30 years experience working in this field.

And so I started a club at Bradley University.

I said, that's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna handle the repair side.

The other part of my research was finding out how much students throw away at the end of each year.

And this happens on just about every college campus.

So I said, okay, why not have sewing events right on campus?

And that's what our club does today.

We have Fix It Fridays, and at the end of the year, we call what's, it's called a Dorm Tour, in which we actually set up our sewing stations in the lobbies of each dorm.

And all the students have to do is just run up to their rooms, bring down their garments, and we fixing 'em on the spot so they get 'em back the same day.

- So whatever needs to be repaired.

So we're talking buttons, hems, and that kind of thing.

- Exactly.

- So your Fix It Fridays, where do you set that up?

- Okay, the Fix It Fridays are actually held in our student center, right on campus.

But it's actually for students and employees.

Or staff, professors, anyone who has a need, a garment repair need, they can stop by and get their garment fixed for free.

- [Christine] Wow.

That's a good deal.

- Yeah, it is.

- So, yeah.

So even if you have heels on and you're putting on your skirt or your slacks or something and it catches and you need your hem repaired, you're there to take care of that.

- We do.

And let me just add, 'cause you mentioned some of the repairs.

We have, we fix missing buttons, the hemming, ripped seams, and broken zippers.

We can do that all on the spot.

- So yeah.

So needle noses pliers?

- Yes.

Tell me about, obviously they're for something metal.

- It is.

- All right.

- For the example, I use that particular tool for repairing zippers.

- You know, right at the top, these are stoppers.

So sometimes people think, oh, you have to take the whole zipper out.

No, if you're trying to replace a slider on your zipper, all you have to do is actually take off the stoppers.

And that's why you need the pliers, this tool.

And then with purchasing new stoppers, you can just clip it right back on using this tool.

- So the new stopper and the new what, what do you call, the slider?

- [Diane] They're called sliders.

- They come together?

- They actually come together.

You can purchase them together.

- [Christine] Who knew?

- Yes.

- Who knew?

But, and then, so you have this chapter?

- Yes.

- At Bradley?

- Yes.

- And you had kind of a fair, I think, at some point, and you attracted a lot of people to come to your first club meeting.

- Yes, we did.

I, surprisingly enough, there are some sustainability-conscious people right on campus.

And currently today we have 15 strong students who actually work with us on a monthly basis during our Fix It Fridays.

And I'm excited about that.

They're passionate about it as well.

They spread the word.

Every time we have an event, you know, they're doing some type of social media getting the word out.

And we're excited about that.

- Well, and and you said earlier, you know, off camera, that they even bring their own sewing machines sometime.

- They do.

Yes.

We have actually, three of them have their own sewing machines.

They let me know whenever I need help, they can bring their sewing machines right to our Fix It Fridays.

And No, that's surprisingly, that they learned how to sew at home and they wanna share their skills right on campus.

- Right.

Well, do you find it interesting that like this generation, and this is just from my own observation is they don't really know a whole lot about repairing garments.

Some don't even know how to thread a needle, you know?

And right now with my eye, you know, I have to use one of those little needle threader things.

- [Christine] (chuckling) Yes.

- But I mean, it's really a shame, that we've come to that point that they'd, you know, many of them rather just toss 'em than get 'em fixed and keep 'em going.

- That is true.

You are right.

Years before, even in my day when I was young, my mom did teach us how to sew and to mend our socks.

And we did a lot of, you know, sharing our clothes, you know, passing down clothes from one generation to the other, my sisters.

But today, students, you know, it's the fast fashion time.

And people think that they, of course, they can purchase their clothes for pretty much a little of nothing.

So rather than get it repaired, they'd rather just purchase another garment.

And that's disturbing, because of course those clothes are going to the landfills where if they just get 'em repaired, even if they don't want them, they can pass it along to someone else.

- Right, exactly.

Donated to a secondhand place or something.

- [Diane] Exactly.

- So your idea for Sewsation is to try to get a chapter on every college campus, everywhere.

But already it's colleges of nursing in town that have them, and they need their scrubs fixed from time to time.

- That's true.

We started at Bradley.

I contacted the nursing department and I found out that there is a need in that particular department on every campus where there's a nursing department.

And so, yes.

And that, the doctor or professor right on campus helped me contact two other colleges right in Peoria, Methodist and OSF.

And right now it's in the development stage.

But no, it's getting to the point where we are getting, actually clubs started at those particular locations.

And I'm excited about that.

- Now, you also went to Franklin School?

- Yes.

- And tell me about what you're working on there.

- Yes.

Well, my club members.

They said, "Well, why not go into the community?"

I'm like, well, that's a great idea.

(both chuckling) And so we contacted the principal right at Franklin Primary School.

And that was, had always been a vision of hers.

She had talked to someone a year ago about starting a sewing club.

I just happened to knock on her door.

She said, "Ah, you answer to my dreams."

- [Christine] How about it?

- And so right now we are teaching third and fourth graders how to sew.

Basic skills, the same thing, just the hemming, sewing on buttons, and, of course, eventually they will get to the point where they can actually replace zippers.

But they're excited about it.

It's an afterschool program that's going on now.

And we are going into the spring semester continuing where they'll actually be working on clothes.

- Mm hm.

Will they actually, so it, it's almost like an extra home ec class.

Will they be able to do some of their own fashions as well?

Or is mostly just repairs that you're doing?

- Currently right now we're gonna just focus on repairs.

- Okay.

- That's, they actually have a closet because some of the students are in need of clothing.

So there are parents, and I guess people within the community, donate to their school closet.

And so occasionally there are clothes that come in that need repair.

So those students who learn how to sew through our after school program will be able to repair those clothes.

- Which is very fortunate.

- Yes.

- Oh, awesome.

So you would eventually like to reach out to other campuses?

- Yes.

- And then how, have you thought about, or has anybody helped you try to figure that out?

Because you have an office on campus now?

- We do.

- All right.

- We do that.

Bradley has really been supportive for this initiative.

The sustainability office, they get behind every event that we do.

I'm excited about it.

They gave us an office space.

So at the end of the year, again, as I mentioned, as we go through the Dorm Tour, we are collecting clothes, the donated clothes that students aren't taking back home.

What we do with those clothes, at the beginning of the following year, we have what's called a Snatch and Grab, because some students come to college, they are in need.

But then there are some others that say, "Well, why not have some new clothes?"

But they come into our event, they can snatch up any clothes or the amount of clothes that they want, take 'em back.

And the rest of the clothes that are left over, we donate them to the local charities, like Pathway Ministries and the Dream Center.

- Okay.

So, so you're always thinking.

- [Diane] Yeah, always thinking, - Just, everything's always evolving.

Now, I know you have some of these, you have a wonderful display over there of things that you use.

And that is your, you're saying Sewsation On The Go.

- Yes.

- So not only campuses, but you're also thinking corporations now?

- We are, we are, we are definitely thinking corporations.

We would like to actually contact or have them contact us in order to repair the employees clothes right on location.

Because, my research last year, I didn't mention that last year I won the Top Undergrad Student Expo Presidential Award.

- [Christine] All right.

- And that was for this research.

And, but it was, I've proven that we're able to repair more clothes when we take the model to the corporations rather than the employees, of course, on weekends.

- Just telling 'em about it, right.

- Exactly, on weekends, okay, they're thinking about getting their clothes repaired.

They actually have to go to a neighborhood cleaners or whatever, which is great, but a lot of them forget and/or may not have time.

But as we go on location, you know, they're able to bring it, pass it down to us, have lunch, come after lunch, come pick it up, we'll have it done the same day.

- That's, you really have thought this through.

Now here's another thing that I wanna talk to you about.

- Yes.

- You have these patches, you have 'em all different colors and sizes and things.

You know, the trend today is to wear those jeans with all those rips in them- - That's true.

- That my mother would never let me outta the house in, but it is a fashion statement now.

So you're not repairing those with these?

- No, no.

(Christine chuckling) Actually, we, a lot of students do bring their jeans, some of the rips that are permanently or they bought.

- They were made that way, right.

- Made that way.

Of course, now they're widening the holes.

So of course sometimes we have to have to narrow the holes.

(Christine chuckling) They ask us to do that.

- All right.

- But a lot of times, yeah, they get worned, you know, in all different places on the legs.

But, you know, these patches definitely come in handy.

- Okay.

- Yes.

- So where do you go from here?

I mean, yeah, what do you do?

Where do you go from here?

What's your next step in all this?

- My next initiative is approaching the city manager in order to either make an amendment to the current city waste management city ordinance, or come up with a brand new one, because we need a city ordinance that handles apparel.

So there, so again, we are having a third landfill built here in Peoria.

I mean, that's amazing for a city- - [Christine] Of mid size.

Right.

- I'd say a mid-sized community.

A third community, I mean a third landfill.

I think we can do something about it by at least not, you know, diverting more and more clothes from the landfills.

It will help keep that landfill open.

And so that's why I wanna approach the city about let's do something to keep clothing away.

Maybe there's putting stickers on the waste baskets and to say, you know, like, here I have, "Clothes are for wearing not for trashing."

That's the message.

You know, because again, if people know better, they'll do better.

And if we educate them, that's another part of our initiative.

Not just for repairing- - [Christine] Knowledge is power.

- Yeah, exactly.

If we put these messages on the trash bins, or if we put them up in city hall.

Right now, we have this message in every lobby of the student dorms.

And it's effective, and I'm happy about that because we see more and more students, if they don't come to the Fix It Fridays, they're contacting us.

"When can you meet?

I'd like to get, you know, my garment fixed."

So I know that if the messages are seen, people will do better.

- So in your office, you have your sewing machine and everything so they can, you have office hours and they can come and they can get the repairs done right then too?

- They can.

And I didn't mention that, yes, along with the Fix It Fridays, if anyone wants to learn how to sew, we have time in order to teach them some basic skills.

So when we have our Fix It Fridays, we actually have the first three attendees that come.

We can teach them some basic skills.

We're gonna do it all.

We wanna educate.

We wanna keep as much clothing from the landfills as possible.

- Right, and I think you said somewhere along, I think you mentioned it, that every, for every student on campus, they pitch three articles of clothing at the end of the school year.

Is that right?

- That's US statistics.

- Oh, okay.

- When we mention about the 11 million tons of clothing going to the waste landfills, that's actually three to six garments per person, depending on the weight.

That's amazing.

So when you think of Bradley having 5,000 students, if everyone on campus throw away one garment that's 5,000 garments.

I mean, it adds some, when you say two garments, three garments, that's 15,000.

So when you think about every college campus and the students are doing the same thing, that's a lot of clothes.

But it can be stopped if every campus adopt a Sewsation chapter, we can make some dent in this, you know, problem.

- Exactly.

So do you think that you could have bins around town where people, or is that problematic for you if you had bins around town?

Because you don't know where these things came from or, you know, you, I mean, you just don't, you can't go dumpster diving for some of these clothes, I guess is what it is.

- But no, you're right.

Because, again, we don't know exactly how the clothes are if they are in the bins.

But yes, we are thinking about that as an additive to the city, having the extra Sewsation bins.

But again, we're working on that part of the solution.

One part we know this, that can be put in place is educating people.

- So what's been the most difficult repair that you've had to make?

Other than, see zippers would blow me away.

But what, have you had any like, whoa, that's kind of a little bit too much.

- No, again, we just work on the simple repairs because, you know, we let the other businesses handle the alterations and some of the harder fixes.

But again, if we can get through the simple ones, we find that we can do that in a day versus people have to wait a whole week in order to get their repairs.

- Right, and your members are very excited about this and getting the word out.

And there's an event coming up at Bradley, I think we talked about that too, where?

- Yes.

This is our spring quarter.

We have our Fix It Fridays in place.

We have one event that's coming up right before Valentine's Day.

In case someone wants to have a heart patch instead of just a normal patch, we will be having our first fundraiser, which is selling the heart patches.

And those are useful not just for decorations, but also you can replace or repair your hole in a jacket or your pants with a heart patch.

- Yeah.

I told you that I was feeling guilty.

I fixed my own jacket, 'cause my watch kept ruining the lining in my jacket.

But I got that done now.

- Okay.

- So thank you.

- Yes.

(chuckling) - Thank you for inspiring me anyway.

Well, and that's a fun idea.

Now fundraiser, you said fundraiser.

- It is.

- So what is the official name of Sewsation on the Spot?

No Sewsation.

Just Sewsation.

- It's just Sewsation, yes.

- Chapter, okay.

All right.

And so the funding will go to?

- It will go toward additional supplies.

So again, these are free events for people on campus and as we go out to the community and host events, it's free for them as well.

So we will always need additional supplies and this will help.

- So now does Bradley help you with some of the costs of your supplies or, and then, and you take other donations?

- Yeah, we always take donations.

Bradley does help a little bit at the beginning of the year.

The student clubs, we can apply for, you know, additional funds.

But of course it's, depends on how much is, you know, we're looking at a hundred clubs going for a small pot of money.

(chuckling) - [Christine] (chuckling) Exactly.

- And so again, we could use some additional funds outside, yes.

- And then a lot of your members are also, they help with the campus tours and everything, so then they can, when they're touring, they can take 'em right by your office and show 'em what's going on.

- That's exactly right.

And they do do that.

They tell me that they've done that.

And I'm excited about, this is a, listen, Bradley has really opened their arms and embraced Sewsation.

And I think that once people see our model, the other campuses and colleges, they will definitely embrace Sewsation as well, 'cause they'll see its needful on their campus.

- And you have a wonderful video that's been done explaining exactly what you do.

- Yes, yes.

The video has been very effective.

I've shown it to definitely quite a few people who, you know, it really touches their heart to learn and find out that this is definitely happening because they had no knowledge as well.

And again, they applaud us for our efforts and what we're doing.

- [Christine] And that's something.

- Thank you.

- So you're kind, I think I mentioned this before, just kidding you of kind of Grandma Moses.

- [Diane] (chuckling) Okay.

- Because you know, a little bit late in life start.

- [Diane] That's true.

- Very non-traditional.

But you're doing it and you're so passionate about it.

- Yes, yes.

I, again, you know, with me having the skill and me thinking about the people you know, overseas, who are, you know, manufacturing our clothes and what they go through, you know, the low wages.

I'm like, who would think to throw something away?

You know, when people are hurting across the seas and they're, you know, they need more, they need income.

They get paid $113 a month on an average.

I mean, think about how much we get paid in comparison to them.

So that's what make me think, "Why are we throwing away clothes?"

You know, every time I look at something that needs fixing, I'm like, let me fix it.

- [Christine] That's right.

- And I want everyone to think that way.

- You haven't ever found anything that is too far gone?

- [Diane] Not yet.

- (chuckling) Okay.

All right.

Well thank you so much, Diane Lewis, for being with us and sharing your passion.

And you're gonna go for it.

- Thank you, thank you.

- Yeah.

You're gonna eliminate that tonnage by at least half, I hope in the first year, or the next year.

- We're gonna try.

- All right.

Thanks so much.

I hope you learned a lot and I hope you're blown away by the statistics because it really is pretty fascinating.

- Thank you.

- All right, thank you.

Thank you for joining us and be well.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues)