Our speaker in February was Dimitra Frangos \u2013 a maker, upcycler and upholsterer \u2013 best known for her creative approach to furniture restoration, repurposing household objects and sustainable making. Rather than buying new, Dimitra specialises in giving old or discarded pieces a new life through careful upholstery, thoughtful design and reuse of materials \u2014 blending traditional craft with modern sustainability values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her journey began with a fascination for fabric that she developed in her teens \u2014 sewing curtains, reviving old chairs and collecting hundreds of fabric off-cuts that most people would discard. Dimitra brought along examples of her restoration projects, including a woven cane chair that had been rewoven using salvaged copper wire and old jeans that had been transformed into bags. She showed us photos of her hand-made stair runner, made entirely from off-cut and remnant fabrics. This wasn\u2019t a mass-produced runner, but a bespoke piece made with care, knitted and pieced together to bring colour, texture and a personal touch to her home. Dimitra was passionate about having a community-focused approach to her craft. Through teaching classes, such as evening upholstery workshops in Girton, Cambridge, she shares her hands-on skills with others interested in learning to transform tired furniture into pieces with renewed life and character. Her work not only restores items to usefulness but adds character, history and sustainability to everyday objects \u2014 inspiring others to view upholstery not just as repair, but as creative transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In other news, following a generous donation from the Over Townlands Charity, we are delighted to have purchased an additional defibrillator for Over village \u2013 we will keep you updated about it\u2019s location and installation when these details are finalised. We look forward to seeing you at our next meeting on March 2nd<\/sup>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our speaker in February was Dimitra Frangos \u2013 a maker, upcycler and upholsterer \u2013 best known for her creative approach to furniture restoration, repurposing household objects and sustainable making. Rather than buying new, Dimitra specialises in giving old or discarded pieces a new life through careful upholstery, thoughtful design and reuse of materials \u2014 blending traditional craft with modern sustainability values. Her journey began with a fascination for fabric that she developed in her teens \u2014 sewing curtains, reviving old chairs and collecting hundreds of fabric off-cuts that most people would discard. Dimitra brought along examples of her restoration projects, including a woven cane chair that had been rewoven using salvaged copper wire and old jeans that had been transformed into bags. She showed us photos of her hand-made stair runner, made entirely from off-cut and remnant fabrics. This wasn\u2019t a mass-produced runner, but a bespoke piece made with care, knitted and pieced together to bring colour, texture and a personal touch to her home. Dimitra was passionate about having a community-focused approach to her craft. Through teaching classes, such as evening upholstery workshops in Girton, Cambridge, she shares her hands-on skills with others interested in learning to transform tired furniture into pieces with renewed life and character. Her work not only restores items to usefulness but adds character, history and sustainability to everyday objects \u2014 inspiring others to view upholstery not just as repair, but as creative transformation. In other news, following a generous donation from the Over Townlands Charity, we are delighted to have purchased an additional defibrillator for Over village \u2013 we will keep you updated about it\u2019s location and installation when these details are finalised. We look forward to seeing you at our next meeting on March 2nd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":5426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/wi_logo.jpg?fit=300%2C225&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Tb23-1vP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5818,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5817\/revisions\/5818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}