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Hand-crafted face coverings for sale now!

What If… North Edinburgh participant Francia Boakye has taken on a new and exciting challenge during the COVID-19 lock down. Based in Muirhouse, Francia has applied her sewing skills to produce beautiful customized face coverings available to buy now!

Having begun her entrepreneur venture with ambitions of starting ‘The sewing café’ which was to be located in the Muirhouse area, Francia has taken this vision in a new direction; running sew your own face covering classes, as well as selling the face coverings online.

This COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed the trajectory of how we do business. This had greatly impacted the vision of the Sewing Café… If the focal vision of The Sewing Café is to eradicate loneliness, then how can this be successfully carried out in a time of self-isolation and quarantine? A bit of an oxymoron, right?

Francia worked to come up with an alternative idea that incorporated sewing and alleviating loneliness.

As my thoughts wandered, I had a lightbulb moment. Why not run my sewing classes on Zoom and call it ‘My virtual Sewing Café’? And so, I did. Bring your own tea/ coffee with cake and join us on Zoom? Not a bad idea at all. …The tagline is ‘Living our best lives even in a time of quarantine! Face to face teaching, no problem. Online teaching, huge problem. But fear couldn’t stop me. I was determined to make it work. My first class attracted about 7 people, then the second about 9 and then so on.
I taught them a craft in season; how to make handstitched face-masks. This idea came about following a YouTube video my mum sent me to check out. This was such a success that I had to repeat the classes a couple of times for others who found out about the class and also wanted to learnSome graduated to making multiple face-masks in all kinds of beautiful fabrics for their family members, and others went on to make and sell face-masks. I was bursting with so much joy. Long story short, I also started receiving orders for face-masks by the bulk.

Since Francia’s launch she has received many bulk orders from customers including Edinburgh Council. Fancy a super fashionable face covering for yourself?

Check out Francia’s Instagram for information on how to order!

You can also read more about Francia’s social enterprise journey and The Sewing Café here.