Picture this: it’s a Sunday in Fremantle, coffee in hand, and there’s a grown man pedalling a bike going absolutely nowhere, legs pumping like he’s racing someone, while beside him a sewing machine hums to life, powered entirely by his effort. You stop. You have to. That’s the Mending Machine – less ‘workshop’, more delightful street theatre with a genuinely useful payoff.

Got a shirt with a button hanging by a thread, or jeans blown out at the knee? Sit down, and someone will teach you to fix it yourself – easier than you’d think and oddly satisfying – while your mate’s still pedalling next to you like he’s single-handedly powering the operation (he is).

Nothing broken? No drama – grab donated bedlinen or curtains from Good Sammy’s and sew a tote bag instead, so you leave with something new either way. We’re roaming Fremantle Design Week all day, so if you spot the bike, that’s your cue.

Find the Mending Machine:
10:00–11:00am – Fremantle Markets
11:15am–12:15pm – Kings Square / Town Hall forecourt
12:30–1:30pm – Cappuccino Strip, South Terrace
1:30–2:00pm – Buffer / extended finish at final stop

Follow us on Instagram to track the bike on the day.

For questions about this event, please contact the organiser.

Care to Rewear
Stéphanie Pontet founded Care to Rewear to keep clothes out of landfill by teaching people to love them for longer. Alongside community clothes swaps and textile literacy workshops, she created the Mending Machine, a pedal-powered sewing station that turns repair into something visible, hands-on and genuinely fun. She’s delivered over 100 clothes swaps across Perth councils and co-founded the Great Global Mend, a mass-repair day where councils and organisations across WA open their doors simultaneously so people can bring a fallen button, a split seam or a torn favourite tee, and fix it on the spot with help from menders. What drives the work is a belief that circular fashion shouldn’t stay theoretical – it should look like someone sitting down at a market on a Sunday, fixing their own jeans, powered by a friend pedalling next to them.