Teamwork is the thread that binds Long Melford family business the Sewing Kabin
It’s a typical Tuesday morning at the Sewing Kabin.
Linda is meticulously turning a tiny hem on the floral chiffon skirt of a special occasion dress.
Kate is adjusting the length of a pair of pale pink trousers, while owner Karen delves through a box of zip sliders for the right one to repair a jacket.
Meanwhile, founder Jean – Karen’s mum – who is officially retired but always willing to lend a hand, has popped in to buy everyone cakes to celebrate her 81st birthday.
Everyone here, apart from Karen, is a great grandmother. The business is built on a combined 150 years of sewing experience. And once people arrive, they tend to stay.
Jean Frost came south from her native Northumberland for a fresh start around 30 years ago. But not long afterwards a family tragedy tore her world apart.
Starting the Sewing Kabin was her way of coping with the pain.
Jean had moved to Long Melford from Essex with her younger sister Lavinia and her husband. But then her sister died aged only 46.
“I was working at the police station in Bury St Edmunds at the time, I used to work in the courts.
“I just fell apart when she died. I just couldn’t think. I had to give up my job because you had to concentrate and I couldn’t handle it.
“This business was born out of the loss. I had to do something I really, really loved.”
Jean had inherited her mother’s talent for sewing. “My mum had five daughters and did all the sewing when we were little. She was a very talented lady.
“At school I loved sewing, I used to help the teacher show the other pupils what to do. It was a hobby that grew. I just love sewing.”
The business is still based in Long Melford but soon outgrew its original home. “I started in a little room over the road,” said Jean, who soon became so busy she sent out an SOS to her daughter in Northumberland.
“In 1994 I called Karen and said I need some help. I said give it six months and if you don’t like it you don’t have to stay. She moved down in the July and she has been here ever since.”
Around four years after she came to Suffolk Jean found happiness again when she met and married her late husband Gordon, who died 11 years ago.
Where her work is concerned she has always been a perfectionist. “Our standards are very high. We don’t ‘make do and mend’,” she said.
“When I came in here it was never like coming to work. I never felt tired even when I was so busy I couldn’t cope with all the work coming in.”
Karen was working as a production supervisor in a factory when she got her mother’s call for help.
“I had just split up with a partner, and Mum rang on a Sunday morning and said do you want to come down, and if you don’t like it you don’t have to stay.
“I packed up my Renault 5 and drove down and started work on the Monday.
“It was very challenging because working in the factory I had never dealt with the public before. But because we were so busy I didn’t have time to think, do I like it or not. We worked weekends and evenings.”
Unlike her mum, she had not been a keen needlewoman. But the family talent must have been there because Jean said: “She didn’t need much training.”
Six months later, Karen met her husband Julian. They live within walking distance of the business, which she took over from her mother several years later.
The Sewing Kabin team are known for tackling difficult challenges.
“We do alterations that other people maybe wouldn’t touch,” said Jean. “But we will always give an honest opinion.”
They take on a huge variety of work. “We’ll do unusual bespoke things,” said Karen. “We did a backdrop for an Abba tribute band concert, and years ago made all the uniforms for the Cornard majorettes.
“We sewed on badges for someone going on a polar expedition with Bear Grylls, and made a strap to hold water bottles for a man going to Yosemite National Park in America, where he would be camping out on the cliff face.
“Recently, I’ve done a cover for a pommel horse and repaired all the straps on the cover for a light aircraft.
“The rule is if we can get into the machine, we’ll do it.
“We also do vintage things for another business, including clothes from the 1920s and ’30s.”
The BBC’s Great British Sewing Bee has sparked new interest in dressmaking since it returned to our screens in 2019.
But Karen refuses to watch. “It makes me want to shout at the TV because some of what the contestants appear to do is just not possible in the time,” she said.
In the back room, rails of clients’ clothes, from fabulous party dresses to men’s leather jackets, are waiting their turn to be altered.
Teamwork is vital and everyone has their speciality. “Between us we have 150 years of experience. I’m a newcomer to the party – I’ve only been sewing for 30 years,” Karen said.
“We all work in very close proximity so we have to get along. No one can know everything. We will ask each other for advice.
“Sometimes a job will fry our brains, but we will get through it, we’ll have a little conference.
“It’s very satisfying and very rewarding, especially when people come in and say ‘you won’t be able to do this. . .’”
Linda Bradstock, who lives in Assington, is known for her impeccable darning, which is not as some of us imagine just what our grannies used to do to socks.
She is in the middle of an ongoing job repairing moth holes in a tartan kilt, perfectly matching the colours and pattern with an invisible mend. “Linda has the patience of a saint,” said Karen.
Linda, who grew up in Ipswich and came to Sudbury in the 1970s, has worked at the Sewing Kabin for 25 years.
She only popped in on the off-chance of a little job to tide her over the winter. The rest, as they are fond of saying here, is history,
“My mum was a tailoress, and I’ve been making my own clothes since I was 13,” said Linda. “I made my children’s clothes, I had three girls and one boy.”
But she had never made a career out of her sewing skills before. “I started off as a canine beautician, clipping poodles. I also worked in a bookies, and at Stephen Walters silk mill on the loom.
“My interest in the intricate kind of sewing has developed since I’ve been here.”
Kate Jackson also joined by chance, 15 years ago. “I’d only gone up the road to post a letter, and Karen had put a notice in the Post Office window for someone to do alterations – no experience needed as training would be given.
“I wasn’t looking for a job. But I live my life on spur of the moment decisions. I went home and said I have a job, I’m starting Monday. My husband just rolled his eyes and said okay.
Kate and her late husband Bob came to Suffolk from London in 1967. They used to live in Great Cornard and had a motor bike shop in Sudbury.
She sewed a little when she was young. “I went to St Martin’s School of Art and did retail display and preferred design to sewing,” she said.
“I’d only done amateur sewing before. Since I’ve been here, I also make panto costumes for the Jubilee Players in Onehouse, because my daughter is involved.”
Jean, who used to help her, recalls letting their imaginations run riot: “We had great fun making the dame costumes,” she said.
Clothes from top designers and budget labels pass through the workshop. But price is not always the best indicator of how well something is made.
They find jeans from famous names can be just as likely to have uneven length legs as a really cheap pair, and Kate points out that some of the best-made garments come from Primark and supermarkets.
While it’s easy to envisage how something can be made shorter, or smaller, there can be ways of making them bigger, depending on how they are put together.
“With one man’s dinner suit we took off the waistband, let the pleats out, and gave him an extra four inches on the waist,” said Karen.
“We’re not trying to sell anyone anything. If there’s no point in doing it we’ll tell them.”
And sometimes, like a recent query about a £1 charity shop buy, it was just a case of telling the owner how to do the job herself.
Before the alteration can be done there is the tedious and often tricky chore of unpicking which takes constant care not to cut the fabric.
If they’re lucky, it’s a chain stitch and, as Karen says, ‘you can just pull one end and you’re off’.
Other times, it’s a real challenge. “You should hear the language,” they confess. But they all agree their job is never boring.
