StitchWorks to Train, Employ Formerly Incarcerated Women
(photo courtesy of StitchWorks)
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowStitchWorks, a program of Indianapolis-based PATTERN, has launched a partnership with Indy nonprofits Project Lia and RecycleForce to train and employ formerly incarcerated women. Six women are being trained to prepare for a job with StitchWorks or another company. The StitchWorks Industrial Sewing Operator training course’s first class of women began earlier this week.
In an interview with Inside INdiana Business, StitchWorks founder Polina Osherov says the program could create a pipeline of qualified workers to fill needed jobs in the sewing industry.
“StitchWorks is providing the curriculum and the instructors,” said Osherov. “Project Lia is assisting with oversight of the actual training and Project Lia volunteers have helped with things like making the kits for the students. RecycleForce has the reach and the relationships to intake the potential students that will come into the program. They are also paying the students to participate in the program.”
StitchWorks says it is pursuing a mission to bring the industrial sewing production back to Indiana.
“Manufacturing, and particularly one that involves sewing, has definitely been on the wane for many decades as apparel manufacturing has gone overseas,” she said. “Now, we’re seeing a lot of reshoring happening because of the issues with China and the cost of production rising. A lot of companies are rethinking where they’re having items made. The challenge is that all of the jobs have gone away and interest has been lost in these trades and so now we have a huge gap in the talent pipeline of folks who can fulfill these jobs.”
StitchWorks plans to employ several stitchers to produce sewn goods on demand.
“We are, in our own small way, trying to fill that pipeline with qualified workers,” said Osherov. “There’s a lot of companies in central Indiana, not just apparel, anything from tent making and ironing board cover makers, all of those folks require somebody to sit at a sewing machine or run a variety of other machines that are related to producing these items and they need more bodies to make the stuff.”
Osherov says they are also looking at the smaller picture of what the program could catalyze. According to Osherov, central Indiana has a small independent fashion design community that could benefit from the program.
“For those folks, what’s really important, is for there to be a small batch production facility,” she said. “One doesn’t exist right now in central Indiana. When these designers start to grow and there’s a greater demand for their collections, they don’t have any manpower to sew the quantity of garments needed because a lot of them are sort of a one-man shop. They also don’t have the means to ship these items to be made in China. A lot of the businesses that could be growing kind of reach a certain point and then they hit a ceiling because they don’t have the means and the capacity to produce garments in any big quantity.”
The StitchWorks Industrial Sewing Operator training course is now a registered apprenticeship program. The Apprenticeship State Expansion grant from EmployIndy, Marion County’s workforce development office, awarded the program $15,000.
Osherov discuss the short- and long-term goals of the StitchWorks program.