Ten days since I last shared my thoughts on lockdown, I would love to be able to tell you that I have achieved all the jobs that I’ve been putting off for ages, but I can’t. I have got closer with some things, but that major spring clean and repainting are no nearer.
However my main task this last week has been sewing scrubs for keyworkers. There is a website and a wonderful group of people co-ordinating the work, sourcing the material, thread etc and collecting the finished products. Although some hospitals are not taking anything made by the public, other places such as doctors’ surgeries, care homes etc are welcoming donations with open arms.
I have lots of fabric as my mother in law was a sewer and an inveterate hoarder, a trait which she has kindly passed on to her son. So when we cleared her house out many years ago, I brought a lot of the fabric back here with me. She had friends who ran a fabric shop so would often buy random lengths to make a garment in the future and of course that fabric was never quite right for what was needed!
The instructions given by the Scrubshub were clear that any fabric had to be cotton or at the minimum 50/50 polyester cotton and washable at 60’C. So I heaved loads of hopefully appropriate fabric into the washing machine to see what survived and most of it did and my washing line looked very odd with random lengths and colours.
Next to print the pattern for the scrubs, tops and bottoms. I have a standard home printer that takes A4 paper and let me tell you that it takes 50 sheets of A4 to print the pattern and then a whole evening to stick them together in the right order and cut them out. Also I discovered that many of these lengths of material just were not long enough to make a complete top or bottom.
I did however have enough to cut out one complete set of large scrubs and so managed to make my first set. My second set were from a donated black bed sheet to make a set for Janine, our curate, as she is on the on call Chaplains’ rota at Stepping Hill Hospital and so needed appropriate apparel. That was much easier I’d made my mistakes on the first set and fortunately as we are not vastly different sizes, I could make sure it fitted. More sets will follow this week.
So although my house isn’t much tidier, my mind is happier as I feel that I am being useful.
Hazel Jenkins