Hello, and welcome to our new blog. We are (slowly) changing our website, we're not really techy people, but giving it a go, trying to accomodate the current times, but also to show you the world of Keepers Makers.

We actually started trading with a market stall selling fair trade goods nearly fifteen years ago. I never properly thought about  how long it was until I've sat down now and worked it out to write this blog.

The trading name Keepers Makers came a bit later, and along the way we've tried many things, but there is one thing we've always stayed true to and that was sustainably and ethically trading.

Even before we set up the business I was always recycling and making. As a younster my grandma was master of thrift and she taught me sewing, knitting and crochet, turning old garments into something new. I was so greatful for this, being a very gangly teenager and nothing in the shops fitted, I was always at a jumble sale or thrift shop picking up clothes to revamp, and being at art school it fitted in perfectly. When the family came along I was always  repairing and making the children's clothes. I customised clothes for a London company, until one day some friends said why don't we produce our own products to sell. So that's when the market stall began.

It's been a long haul to the present day. The confidence and courage to sell my own work has been a hard slog. Hence why for many years we sold fair trade goods, happy in the knowledge it fitted in with the ethics I've always lived by, but avoiding the fear of showing the things I made. I always hid them at the back of the stall. Acheivment comes in many ways, not financial, which would be good but it's not everything, and this is ours.

The plaited rugs and baskets I love. We can use waste facric that would otherwise end up in landfill, and give it a completely new life.  We are laying the ground work and working hard towards a future where we feel we can pass on our experience and the skills with in our family, provide services for our local community, purely out of recycling waste materials.

Join us as we make that journey. 

Stay safe, Jacquelyn  x