Material Girls

Whether it’s a matter of style or sustainability, making your own clothes is seriously back in fashion - meet the women who have it all sewn up

- Helen Carter

The North West has been synonymous with the cotton trade for hundreds of years, its giant mills the industrial titans of their day.

Cottonopolis may have died along with those dark Satanic mills of William Blake’s Jerusalem, but there’s a very modern material industry beginning to flourish once more in the region – albeit of more modest proportions.

You can see it on the shop floor of Altrincham’s Sew Creative, a material-shop-cum-sewing studio, where its six sewing machines are all occupied; absorbed-looking faces, studiously inspecting their work.

Here owner Kate Proctor, 33, holds up to four adult sewing classes a day and more for children and teens. Her students range from six to 60-plus and business is, now, booming.

It started three years ago when she began advertising her sewing services from a table in a local Hobbycraft store. ‘I sat there for five weeks and nobody turned up. Eventually a lady wandered up to me and asked if I taught adults. She knew how to sew but she wanted to learn how to make her own patterns. She was my first customer – and is still one now,’ says Kate.

She’s now far from the only one. Fast forward to May last year and there was enough custom to warrant opening a dedicated shop-and-studio.