May Update
Following the successful roll out of the vaccination programme nationally ,and the slow release from lockdown, we have started to notice that our volunteers are talking about and taking the first steps towards their “normal” lives, resuming their businesses and going back to work. Good luck one and all but please don’t forget us – the need is still very much there. Rosie currently has rainbow scrubs fabric laid up on the top floor of the squash courts, 75 layers deep, 10 metres long, which will cut 675 rainbow tops over 5 sizes with scrub hats, well being bags, masks and headbands slotted in the gaps. So we still need our wonderful sewers – whatever you feel you can do would be much appreciated!
We received a lot of positive feedback about last month’s edition, so we thought you might like to meet some more of the machine team:-
Eve Bradshaw:
Eve came to the scrub hub via her friend Eugenie who was sewing already, and Eve was willing to learn. Thanks to Eugenie and others in the machine team Eve has now progressed to delivering two to three sets of scrubs per week, which is incredible given she didn’t sew before. Eve says she finds it very good for her mental health – now she can put the radio on and sit down at her machine, and inner peace comes. It has been a lifesaver for her, and literally got her through lockdowns, knowing she can now sew, do good, and be creative. Eve’s mother initially bought her a machine (Scrubby) but it was” underused” until she took up making scrubs and now she couldn’t do without it, and also does alterations for people - a complete change from her career as a Civil Servant and busy life as a parent in Putney. When not sewing she devotes her energies to her children’s schools being one of the Governors.
Penny Dupré:
Penny has had her own catering business for many years now – pre-lockdown she was providing her culinary skills for weddings, private functions and even making Foreign Office lunches. COVID-19 put an end to all of that. Luckily for us, Penny has always loved sewing in her spare time. She heard about a sewing group providing scrubs for the renal unit of Hammersmith Hospital, and started volunteering for them. When that group came to an end, she migrated to the Scrubbery, specialising in scrubs and wellbeing bags. For Penny working here has been a lifeline, it gave purpose to her day, and she calculates she must have done over 60 sets by now. She greatly admires Rosie for her forward planning, scrub design and the way she makes it so easy for everyone to sew the scrubs with the way the kits are rolled up, cut and laid out, with clear instructions for all. She is justifiably proud of the end results – and thinks they are “very high quality good looking scrubs”. Volunteering for us has rekindled her interest in sewing, and kept her fit – she cycles across Richmond Park each week to collect and drop off her kits. We have been lucky to have her, even in lockdown she has been cooking Christmas dinners for those living alone, and working for FISH ( Friendship, Independence, Support and Help) in Barnes baking cakes for birthdays in lockdown, and preparing lunches for the Barnes Green Day Centre. Even with catering jobs looming Penny is still keen to sew for the Scrubbery when she can; we are so grateful.
Jan Jakobsen
Jan’s career was spent working in the City supporting the banking industry with Comms and IT support. Sadly arthritis brought that career to an early close. Her mother was a keen sewer and Jan recalls watching her sew and learning from her – she made lots of curtains and bits and bobs but hadn’t really sewn much in the way of clothing, come lockdown she dusted down her 40 year old machine when a friend suggested sewing scrubs. With her arthritis she couldn’t cut cloth but could sew. Another friend saw the notice in their church about the Scrubbery, and Jan reached out to Lucy – and she was off to the races! She likes making the scrubs - she knows what she is doing and can rattle off three per week. She has her own conveyor belt system going – all the ironing at once, all the same pieces for all three kits at once. She has seen them all from the "horrible pale blue ones", the slippery purple ones, to the stiff rainbow material..and she has conquered them all. The way the kits are bundled allows her to mark with chalk all the right sides the moment she unrolls them so she is confident that she will not have a right side with a wrong side when she comes to sew. Well done Rosie for solving that issue in advance. Volunteering has been really good for her and lockdown has flown past. It has given her motivation as well as being really enjoyable. At the end of the day it’s a good feeling to know that you have contributed and especially when she sees the advertisments on the telly and someone is wearing one of our scrubs – “ wow - we did that –gives you a good feeling”. Hear, hear!
Mary C
We have to thank Mary’s husband for drawing her attention to the notice in the church Pews News. She has had her machine for over 53 years but never really used it apart from a few jobs on hems – but that same old machine and Mary have risen to the challenge of scrubs. Her daughters and grandchildren are not sewers but her grandson is fascinated by all things mechanical so she intends to donate her sewing machine to him at some point in the future. In her former life Mary was a magistrate for 25 years, specialising in youth crime and based in and around the court system of London. Mary says she is not a natural seamstress but thanks to Rosie’s guidance and support she got underway, She really benefitted from her in-house tutorial at the Scrubbery. She even says she was slightly ashamed that she didn’t even know how to change a needle, until Lucy told her that she could do that. Mary felt she had to rise to the challenge and she has. Her church in East Sheen has been an important part of her life and is her community. Along with some friends from her church she finds camaraderie and sharing of knowledge very inspiring. She walks to the Scrubbery so it is good exercise too. She finds the sewing soothing and it keeps her occupied when she needs to be. Her busy life fills most of her days amply, but she likes to know that she can still fit scrub making in amongst it all. Initially she felt some guilt at her finished product but thanks to all the help, and guidance she has had she feels she has personally progressed from being a “poor sewer to a reasonable one”. I think we would all agree that this is an understatement from someone producing two neat sets per week throughout lockdown.
Brigid Norris:
Her mother, a busy doctor, dressed her four daughters during WW2 by making, altering and mending their clothes. She taught them all to sew. Brigid sewed for her teddy, dolls and later her own home, children and now grandchildren. When growing up her uncle started Millfield School. He decided to take in girls for the first time just as she was reaching the equivalent of A levels at a stuffy girls school. He bribed her to join his school, with the promise of science lessons which up to then she had never had. Brigid went on to become an aeronautical engineer. Married life and her own children ensued and she ended up with a career teaching Physics and Maths. One of her more challenging roles was when she was asked to set up Science at the School for the Blind – which given that she had no Braille, no books, no equipment and no time concessions for students with disabilities taking GCSE’s then, it was a huge challenge. Physics is a visual subject, and having learned that there are no numbers in Braille it had to be approached in an innovative way – but she managed, and indeed she loved her years there working with students who had the most amazing auditory and tactile skills, and just wanted to learn.
She says “Thank you Rosie for allowing me to make a small contribution to the NHS during the pandemic.”
Gill Taylor:
Gill is a retired SRN nurse. She started out in South Africa nursing and travelling. She married and had three children, and moved across the pond with her husband's work. Two of the children were, in fact, born in the USA. What was supposed to be for a couple of years there turned into twelve before returning to the UK. Sadly she didn’t have a green card so could not work over in the USA but she was able to support early childhood development clinics as a classroom assistant. On her return to the UK, Gill threw her energies into being a post birth doula in London and Kent, where she was living at the time. She moved back to London around seventeen years ago.
Her time in the USA brought on her creative edge – with lots of tapestry kits and crochet to try her hand at, and she even managed some sewing for her children but nothing very significant. Rosie and the other sewers in the church in Putney helped her to gain confidence and now she happily sews scrubs and headbands. Gill enjoys learning new techniques and is happy to try and take on more challenges at the Scrubbery time permitting. “Hats off to Rosie for her phenomenal energy, drive and commitment” was her comment.
What have we been up to this month:
Deliveries were sent to:
Critical care technologists, St. George’s University Hospital, for whom we added additional pockets to carry their equipment.
Epsom Vaccination Centre
Queen Mary Hospital Vaccination Centre
Greyswood Practice Vaccination Centre
Princess Alice Hospice
via Priscilla Wakefield House we answered an emergency call for scrubs from the Caribbean Veteran Community to help after the volcano eruption in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The Royal Navy handled shipping and delivery of our contribution, made up of 308 orphaned scrub tops, 314 orphaned scrub trousers, 83 sets of scrubs and 350 scrub hats. This doesn’t mean we have opened a workhouse and are putting underage orphans to work, but rather sometimes we have ends of rolls or donations made into single tops or trousers that aren’t yet worked into co-ordinating sets, and we call these orphans...
Orders we are working on now include rainbow scrubs for Newham Hospital, Whipps Cross Hospital and the Royal London Hospital (all part of Barts Hospital Trust); Wandle PCN paramedics and Battersea Arts Centre vaccination hub. We urgently need more people to sew, please encourage more people to join our team…
Two MPs, Sarah Owens and Rachel Hopkins, made a special delivery up to Luton Hospital – again after a direct appeal to Rosie. We try to focus our attention on the London area but sometimes if we can help, we like to try. Both MPs have been lobbying Parliament for better pay and personal protective equipment for health care workers in Luton.
The pupils at Ibstock school are back in the Hub after the easing of lockdown. They come in once a week and have been busy creating lovely thank-you cards to put in the wellbeing bags – using pens, offcuts from scrubs material etc. Thank you all, your efforts are invaluable, indeed we had feedback from one Doctor, who had been a recipient of a bag, and who singled out the card and message as being a very emotional thing for her.
Our youth and family ministers from the Parish of Putney, Nikki Cornfield and Jackie Davis, visited the Scrubbery to have an exploratory conversation about how we might strengthen ties with the parish youth and families. They were very enthusiastic about what has been achieved so far.
Keep an eye out, our scrubs have been featuring in a lot of TV advertisements for the NHS and are on the news and media generally. A huge thank you to all our volunteers, take pride in the fact that you helped to produce them. A job well done!
Rosie has been busy spreading the word in the media and on the radio. She was fortunate to be given an extended slot on BBC Radio London talking about her role, thoughts on PPE provision and the Scrubbery which was well received generally. Let us hope the right people were listening!
Advocacy
This week a promising meeting took place at the Scrubbery with Lynda Yong, Holly Fulton, and Maria Keene.
Lynda is a couture designer and founder of Scrubs Glorious Scrubs in Ascot.
Holly is a founding member of the Emergency Design Network, a volunteer led enterprise that supports local production of key garments such as scrubs. Holly works with the Fashion Roundtable, an advocacy group that has been lobbying Government in many areas relating to fashion, and PPE during the pandemic. She is also the Head of Fashion at the Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts.
Maria is the founder of a voluntary community group, Sew Solid Crew, making scrubs, masks and gowns for the NHS, food banks and refuge centres.
The purpose of this collaboration is that by coming together we have a stronger voice in some areas, especially lobbying parliament; contributing to a universal scrubs pattern; sustainability programs; working with the prison service; and the manufacture of scrubs in the UK. For example a program to help prisoners to sew scrubs while in prison, and learn skills that could help rehabilitate them and give them work on release, is being discussed.
While the discussions are in early stages, this is an exciting initiative to grow our voice and help to make a lasting difference. Our drive has always been to find solutions rather than just be a stopgap.
Donations / Thank you
There are always so many generous organisations and people to mention:
This time around its about the smaller donations. We all enjoy it when couriers and postmen arrive at the hub clutching boxes, bags and bundles. The Amazon shop is a successful way of contributing.
We did receive a large donation from Balmonds, of face and skin balm. Thanks are due to Sandra Curzon for making that happen. We are very grateful for these little tubs, they are absolutely ideal for our bags.
A super delivery came in from Nisa Thiru of lots of lovely toiletries and new scarves for our wellbeing bags. Some items from Soap and Glory, and Champneys bubble bath were among them. All very welcome, thank you.
Thank you also to the tireless members of the Wellbeing Bag team who source donations, collect contributions and organise distributions, in particular Rosie, Lucy, Ann, Cathy, Lettie and Tina. We had a request for 3,000 bags from one hospital and many smaller requests, so there is plenty of ongoing demand for these, perhaps even more so as lockdown eases and people begin to forget the exhausted healthcare workers who more than ever need our support.
We are delighted normal life is returning to us all, but please don’t forget we have another lay in progress, so there will be plenty of kits available for finishing in the coming days / weeks. Our work continues.
Stay healthy and happy and see you at the Scrubbery!
If you wish to contribute to the newsletter, or to tell the wider community about yourself, please ping Lettie at lettieg@hotmail.com
If you want to contribute to the wellbeing bags don’t forget to go to our Amazon Shop and select the goodies you wish to purchase for the bags from the carefully selected items shown on our page