Repair Pop Up at Fish Bin Flea Market

The Fish Bin Flea is a vintage, antique and handmade market run by Peach of both @melyn.vintage and Three of Cups Vintage in Penryn. It pops up in Falmouth and the surrounds, this time it was at the beloved Potager Gardens in Constantine, in the beautiful greenhouse, the perfect place to take Beyond Repair's mobile mending shop for the day.

I took my domestic sewing machine, my iron, a rail of vintage clothes and my beaut of a new sign (painted the night before by illustrator and friend Jess Balla) . I packed as many repair supplies as I could - my zip fixing kit, some jeans zips in different sizes, buttons, patches, needle felting tools and fluff, the humble needle and thread of course. Setting up was a rush and felt nerve wracking! Pre-menstrual and clumsy as hell, I knocked all the letters out of my perfectly pre-arranged felt letter board price list trying to drag my table across the slabs to get it into the perfect position (Hence typo - arrgh!) . But once I had all my machines, cables and equipment set up, I could settle down and enjoy chatting to the vintage sellers. 

They supplied me with my first mends to consider, a shirt with a rip, an incredible dainty dress with mermen and two broken zip pulls (this one came back to the workshop with me) and a commission from Peach to add bright red linen belt loops to a thick cotton romper she had just bought! By then, the place was super busy and a few hours of chatting to people about mending, weighing up different alteration options and giving out business cards flew by.

I met so many interesting traders and the selection of garments was incredible! A total joy to watch people falling in love with pieces all over the place ( I met and brought home a very yummy blue, yellow and pink floral dropped waist floaty cotton dress from Happy Dais from PZ) 

I can't wait to do my next version of a pop up, it's great to be able to show people how quick, simple and effective repairing can be. Photos by @remjet Rhiannon Jenkins