September News
This month we laid out the last of our rolls of rainbow fabric, another set of 70+ layers, which will make several hundred distinctive scrub tops. You may not remember the origins of this fabric, so it is worth recounting it as it comes to the end of its journey. Noah Evans, the 11 year old son of Chris Evans, spent 28 days camping out in a homemade den in his back garden to raise funds for scrubs. His Dad also auctioned off items donated by various celebrities and together they raised over £1.3m. The funds raised were used to purchase over 100,000 metres of rainbow fabric, which was designed especially by Tessa Semple, former head of design for Liberty London. These rolls were then distributed to scrub hubs all over the country.
It was even appreciated by the Scrubbery volunteer cat, christened Bobbin, who visits periodically, on his own schedule, as cats do.
Meet the team
It is time for more in our irregular meet the team column...
My name isNell Coxand I am a third year Religion and Theology student at the University of Bristol. I found out about the Scrubbery through word of mouth at my local church All Saints Putney. Although I hadn’t sewn since I was taught by my grandmother at a young age I wanted the challenge and had the time over lockdown! Slowly but surely I made my way through pairs of scrubs improving each time through the clear instruction and advice of Rosie. I managed to build my confidence in sewing and started coming in to the Scrubbery to help around with any sewing bits needing doing. Like many others part of this organisation, this was a wonderful thing to go and do weekly.
Through the sewing I did for the Scrubbery, I found a place of happiness and decided I wanted to pursue this further in my life. I have decided that I want to work in the fashion industry when I’m older! I am also now the Fashion Director of one of the UK’s largest fashion, dance and music organisations based in Bristol called FUZE. My job is to source fashion designers across the country (and some international also!) and choose a cast including models, musicians and dancers to perform in our June show. I will style each cast member’s outfits and work towards putting the whole show together. This is an incredibly exciting opportunity which I hope will put me in good stead before leaving university in the Summer of 2022. Wherever I end up in life, I will always be thankful for all the wonderful people I met through the Scrubbery group, from the advice on how to master making a mask, to advice in my future career and just having someone new to talk to! I am very grateful and I am so proud of what this organisation has accomplished.
Hilary
I found out about the Scrubbery in a newsletter from our lovely MP, Fleur Anderson, and thought ahah! this is something I could do. This was during the second lockdown which I found much, much more difficult than the first. I’d done all the tasks I’d planned for the first lockdown and was feeling very fed up.
For various reasons, it took a while to make contact but I persevered and, once I’d fought my way through the technology and actually spoken to a real person, Rosie, it was fine. I think I started making scrubs about November, just before the Christmas that didn’t happen.
It’s been great. I feel useful and my machine sewing has improved no end. I’ve done a good bit of volunteering previously and usually it’s quite difficult getting accepted. The Scrubbery is different as everyone is so welcoming and helpful and I like that the real focus is getting the work out. I’m going on with regular sewing though I think it’s dreadful that it is still needed and I am getting a bit tired of making hats! (Narrator: you will be pleased to know that just before we received Hilary’s text, we had moved her on to making some of the 300 rainbow scrunchies to go alongside 300 rainbow masks requested by Whipp’s Cross Hospital)
Thank you, Rosie and Lucy, you’re doing a wonderful job and probably saved my sanity (such as it is) during winter 20/21. I’ve met some really interesting people.
Kitty Dawes
Kitty Dawes, 95, has been working away to produce Trauma Teddies for distribution to the Ambulance Service and Refugee centres. The origins of trauma teddies is lost to time, but the idea is that they are knitted by volunteers and distributed to children who have suffered any kind of trauma. Many organisations around the world help organise the making and distribution of these. We mainly give them to ambulance and fire services.
Kitty came to hear of The Scrubbery through her daughter-in-law Kathy, who has been sewing scrubs for us for 18 months. Kitty left school on her 14th birthday in December 1939 and started work, stayed home in London during the blitz. She finished up in the ATS Royal Signals when she was 18+.
Her mum taught her to knit when she was about 5 or 6 and she sewed at home on her mum’s sewing machine, which she still has, making loads of things, including a dresssing gown for her head mistress in a green satin type material with Italian quilting up the fronts and round the hem and sleeve cuffs, everyone in the class did a bit of it.
Kitty took knitting back up when she was Snowy Owl in her local Brownie pack. She knitted toys for sale at the church bazaars which became very popular and raised a lot of funds. She continues to knit today. As well as the Trauma Teddies she makes donkeys for the Donkey Sanctuary raising £260 of funding so far. She saves all the small balls of wool that are left over for dog blankets, for Battersea dogs. She belongs to a knitting group in her local library and gets 'orders' from them when they are doing something special for the children. They have knitted Harry Potter things, Elmer the patchwork Elephant and pumpkins cats . They also knit poppies which are sold for the British Legion. In 2019 they raised over £70. During the lock down her knitting group organised a window display for Easter, Halloween Christmas and Poppy day so that local children could be taken for a walk around and see all the diffferent designs that had been put up.
She is happy to receive wool donations. She uses DK double knitting wool, any colour.
Last month highlights & thanks
Deliveries have been made to
The Shrubbery GP practice
The Royal London Hospital
St George’s University Hospital
University College London
Newham Hospital
We have continued to distribute wellbeing bags, and the response is always one of heartfelt thanks and gratefulness.
This month we wanted to mention all our friends and supporters in the Volunteer Riders UK group who make it possible to ship kits, cloth and finished product all around the country. They come to the window at Roehampton for socially distanced drop off and collect. They have become our friends and family during all of this and we really appreciate their efforts. Here is a snapshot of some of them..they are from all sorts of backgrounds and ages, just like riding their bikes and doing good – modern day Pony Express!
Everyone at the Scrubbery sends a massive thank you to Gerry Walsh for all he has done for us over the last eighteen months. He has been a superstar – delivering and collecting all our kits and finished articles all around SW London. Unfortunately for us his family commitments now have to take precedence and we will miss him enormously.
West Middlesex Hospital, one of the hospitals that we have been supporting through the Scrubbery, contacted us to say that they are the designated hospital to receive Afghan refugees from Heathrow. Any women over 17 weeks pregnant come to the Queen Mary Maternity Unit, and those under 17 weeks go through the Emergency Department. They had already admitted a number of women who unfortunately had very little. They asked us to put out a call for specific items and the response was enormous - we had filled their request by the end of the next day. In fact they were overwhelmed with donations but the excess we collected we have been able to direct to Little Village, a local charity supported by the Parish of Putney, who also collect for expectant and young mothers in need, particularly refugees.
Many thanks to all of you who contributed so quickly and generously.
Just some of the items collected for the Afghan refugees, carefully washed where needed and then sorted into 94 labelled bags. The delivery filled a moving truck and overflowed into a small car! Thanks are due to Central Moves who donated van and a man for this delivery.
Another of our young volunteers over the summer, Lucy, returned to work but contacted us to say "I am already missing the Scrubbery, and I'm glad I took a few scrub kits to keep up sewing when I can. I decided to sew you a small thank you embroidery using the logo on the Scrubbery website. I enjoyed volunteering with you and learned so much. Wishing you all the best and I hope to see you again in the future!"
