Hi, I'm teen author Tash Bell, and I never meant to do this! Fashion upcycling was NOT the plan - I just wanted to write a book. The Swish is my spin on the Cinderella story. Can hard-up schoolgirl Kat Parker make her own happy ending when she sews her own gown for the ball?

So far, so good… until I started taking my book into schools. Time and time again, I heard the same thing from my teen readers: ‘We love Kat, we love the IDEA of making our own clothes. There’s just one catch: we can’t sew.’

Aaagh, what can one do?! Easy (in my case): stop wailing, and put a big, fat chunk of my book revenue into launching theswish.co.uk. Because there’s no doubt in my head: fashion upcycling builds kids’ confidence; boosts their creativity, and gets them feeling good about themselves – and their world. Best of all? Anyone can do it… even a sewing klutz like me. Confession time: I’m not a crafty mum. I’m not even a very good mum! Show me a crochet hook, and I’ll use it unblock the sink. I can take up a hem, but that’s only after years of sellotaping them up in nightclubs. I’m the queen of wonky running stitch. I struggle to thread a needle – especially when my reading specs fog up. Sit me down at a sewing machine? I’ll panic, hit the pedal and sew over my hand.

But it’s precisely this dodgy skillset that makes me the DOYENNE of upcycling. Because the joy of refashioning is you don’t need to be a super sewist. Dig out a preloved top - snap up a secondhand skirt - and all the ‘tricky stuff’ has already been done: seams calculated, zips inserted, collars starched. All you need do is summon your imagination, pick up the scissors, and let rip! Slash sleeves, trash skirts, paint panels, stencil pockets, cut downbottoms, frill up tops. Play around with what’s to hand. Embellish, embroider, experiment. As I tell the hundreds of kids I sew with, ‘How can you do wrong? This is your design - no-one else on the planet will be wearing it. How cool is that?’ Cooler, certainly, than fast fashion…

We do our best to duck the bad news, but some bullet points for you:

• The fashion industry causes more climate change than all planes and ships in the world combined.
• An adult could survive for 2.5 years on the water it takes to produce just ONE cotton t-shirt.
• Globally, we dispatch a lorry-load of discarded clothes for landfill or burning every second.

Can we blame our kids for feeling anxious about their world? That’s why I’ve launched Swish workshops (yep, there's nothing can't be fixed by a workshop these days!). Releasing kids’ real-life superpower – sewing – we go into youth charities, schools and festivals, throwing hands-on, how-to sessions full of laughter, music and chat. Gotta creative teenager with a birthday coming up? We can rock up to throw a Swish Upcycling Party for them. Got a classroom of students who need to be peeled off their phones? Get me in for an Interactive Author Talk – then, let’s get them all collaborating on a Swish Sustainable Prom!