Shortly after launching our Bucks Coronavirus Stabilisation Fund, we were delighted to receive a £600 donation from Loosley Row Sewing Group. The group had raised funds to pay for materials in order to make and send out PPE all over the country and they chose to donate the remaining money from this project to Heart of Bucks to help us give grants to support the most vulnerable in the county throughout COVID-19.
By the end of the community project, Loosley Row Sewing Group had grown to a team of 60 dedicated members who produced 235 pairs of scrubs, as well over 600 scrub hats and washing bags which were distributed locally and nationally, from care homes, to ambulance services, to GP practices. Great Ormond Street Hospital, Stoke Mandeville Hospital and the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford have all received supplies from this fantastic project.
The packages include a thank you note with a special logo designed by talented Loosley Row Sewers Sally Fisher and Karen Galvin, a ceramic ‘thank you’ keepsake made by Vicki from Pot-Tastic in Princes Risborough and iced cookies from Alpa who normally would be busy making wedding cakes.
Kate Collet-Fenson explains how and why the project came into being. “I was struck by the uncomfortable feeling of wanting and needing to be useful and almost painfully aware of the contrasts of experience from an almost idyllic feeling of a delicious never-ending bank holiday to the horrific war-like images being played out just down the road at our care homes, hospitals and even our supermarkets.
“Despite having never sewn in my life, but with a mother and daughter who had recently rediscovered the sewing machine, I was pretty confident that we could find a few friends and furloughed work colleagues who could take on this challenge.
“I happened upon this amazing national movement – For the Love of Scrubs. The movement was started on the 23rd March by a nurse Ashleigh Linsdell after she identified early on in the pandemic a shortage of scrubs for the NHS and others dealing with frontline services. The movement is now made up of sub-groups up and down the country with 55,000 sewers and over £50,000 raised, producing thousands of scrubs, scrub bags and hats to the frontline throughout the whole of the UK.
“I put a ‘shout out’ to our Loosley Row and Lacey Green Covid Community Whatsapp group and before I knew it, our wonderful village communities in and around Loosley Row pulled together to form our very own sub group as part of the For the Love of Scrubs movement, sewing and producing medical scrubs and accessories for our local hospital, carers and GP practices”.
Here are just a selection of the heartfelt thank you messages received by Loosley Row Sewing Group:
“Thank you so much to you and your team of scrub sewers. I confess I cried when I opened the bag. Not only were there scrubs to fit everyone which was such a relief but so many beautiful extras”.
“We just received the package! Wow!! Thank you so so much and how amazing that it has all been covered by donations. We are so appreciative. The little thank yous are just so kind!”
“Kate I cannot thank you and your team enough, the parcel was beautiful. The scrubs fit like a dream – they are making work tomorrow seam so much more appealing. Everything about the parcel has so much love and thought”.
