AWARD winning British fashion designer Patrick Grant visited Reading's Alana House last week to teach members how to sew.

Alana House is a women's community support group and is part of the Parents and Children Together (PACT) project.

It focuses on empowering women, teaching them new skills to improve their lives.

Its new initiative 'Out of The Box' involved teaching women how to make craft items to sell on, including tote bags, jewellery, woodwork and knitted clothing.

Mr Grant spent time getting to know the women before inspecting their work.

He said: "Community Clothing aims to make really good quality, affordable clothing in British factories during their quiet periods. Fashion is really seasonal and factories have loads of spare capacity. This is a way to bring prosperity back to UK factories.

"We are also trying to do everything we can to encourage people back into clothing-making and there are opportunities for some of the work to be done outside factories. We are investigating anywhere where people are sewing where there may be opportunities to make it a commercial, viable thing and people can make a living out of it."

Last year, Alana House supported 190 women from Reading and West Berkshire, through drop in sessions and one to one support.