Jinty’s eco thread runs through new stores
Inspirational character lives on through haberdasheries named in her honour
Volunteers at a Lanarkshire charity have paid a touching tribute to their late colleague and friend by naming two new, trailblazing eco haberdashery stores after her.
R:evolve Recycle recently opened what’s believed to be among the first eco-conscious haberdasheries in the country within its award-winning swap shops in Rutherglen and Hamilton.
The haberdasheries’ ethos of wasting nothing and recycling everything is all that tireless volunteer Janice Milligan stood for.
When the much-loved 66-yearold gran sadly passed away suddenly after a heart attack in June last year, her fellow volunteers at charity Leap thought it only fitting that they should name the new haberdashery stores after the woman they fondly called Wee Jinty.
The volunteers rolled up their sleeves, as Janice would have done, to make bunting to herald the arrival of Wee Jinty’s in the two towns.
And within the dedicated haberdashery sections of both R:evolve clothing stores, a plaque is mounted on the wall in memory of Wee Jinty and in appreciation of the time and talent she devoted so generously to the project and its efforts to reduce South Lanarkshire’s carbon footprint.
Janice was often considered the heart and soul of R:evolve. Her crafting talents were surpassed only by her genuinely shining personality and open heart.
When Janice passed away unexpectedly, the staff felt that there would be no better tribute than to name the new haberdashery after the woman who would have loved it the most.
Since R:evolve Recycle shops opened in 2015, they have successfully swapped clothing and accessories to reduce the amount of textiles that end up in landfill – quality items that have been proudly paraded on the catwalk by Scottish supermodel Eunice Olumide.
With many donated items arriving at the charity’s sorting centre at the end of their life, the R:evolve team put their heads together to come up with a solution that would allow them to salvage what they could from items that few people would want.
That’s when the concept was born of the eco haberdashery, which sees buttons, zips, badges, braiding, ribbons and lace being removed from items and sold to customers for use in their crafting and sewing projects.
Also on sale within Wee Jinty’s are knitting needles, sewing boxes, threads and even sewing machines.
Janice’s younger daughter and Leap’s social enterprise development manager, Wendy Russell, explained: “We are determined that clothing brought into us stays in South Lanarkshire and doesn’t end up becoming someone else’s problem. We might very well put our textiles into recycling and think we are doing the right thing. But we see on the news that quite often, those textiles go to places like Africa.
“People there would rather spend a small amount of money on a second-hand football top, rather than spend a bit more on something that has been produced locally – and so the locally-made textiles lose their value and that has a negative impact on the country’s economy. What we try to do is find creative ways of reducing the amount of waste.”
The R:evolve Recycle concept, says Wendy, was based on her upbringing and her mum’s insistence on throwing away nothing and making her children’s clothing by hand.
“If I wanted a really nice dress or outfit for a wedding or special occasion, I would always turn up in something nobody else would have – because my mum had made it,” she said.
“If I admired a nice trouser suit in a shop, she’d say: ‘I will run that up on the machine at home.’ It was a standing joke that she could ‘run anything up.’
“There wasn’t much money around and she was just very thrifty.
“To her, there was no point in spending a lot of money on big names when you can make it nicer yourself.”
The mantra of Janice Milligan – who worked in the Rutherglen shop as a workshop leader and taught the community how to sew and upcycle clothes – was to re-purpose items, don’t discard anything, and create beautiful things out of nothing.
Now, each one of R:evolve’s 62 volunteers are contributing to the success of the new haberdashery brand that bears her name.
Thanks to funding from Zero Waste Scotland, R:evolve was recently able to take occupancy of a large sorting space in Cambuslang for volunteers.
From there, donated items that can be swapped will be distributed among the shops, others will be broken down into products for sale in Wee Jinty’s, while some will go to partner projects such as homeless shelters.
“The whole plan for the project is so that people can get hold of haberdashery items, but none of it is new,” continued Wendy, of Cambuslang.
“You do not have to buy multipacks of anything. If you want one button, you can buy one button.
“We are also developing a new, online shop to feature these second-hand haberdashery items with the goal of sharing our passion for swapping, sharing, mending and making to the larger community.
“We also now have the ability to accept donations of wool, fabric, crafting materials, embellishments, and household textiles such as curtains and bed sheets.
Wee Jinty’s in the R:evolve clothing stores in Hamilton and Rutherglen is open Wednesday to Friday, 10am to 4pm.