Sewing Skills Making A Difference

Our employees can volunteer in response to Covid-19 during work time, if they are not a key worker. Tracey Standring is one of those volunteers.

Employees are bringing different attributes to the volunteer cause, including Tracey Standring of Corporate Planning at the Risley office in Warrington who is putting her sewing skills to good use in her spare time.

Tracey, alongside fellow sewers in a purposely-formed local Trafford ‘Scrub Hub’, have been supplying numerous hospitals and clinics with protective medical scrubs, scrub bags and headbands, and are now focused on supplying nursing homes that have insufficient and inadequate PPE.

She said:
"It’s fantastic how people are pulling together to support the community, I really wanted to volunteer but was struggling to know how I could contribute. I found a pattern to make scrubs that are desperately needed and realised this was how I could make a difference.

"Our team has distributed more than 100 sets of scrubs and 450 scrub bags so far to Trafford General Hospital, Salford Royal Infirmary, Altrincham General Hospital, Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester Children’s Hospital, a number of medical centres and GP surgeries as well as care and nursing homes. We have lots more scrubs in preparation and others awaiting fabric."

So far, the group have been sewing scrub bags with recycled duvet covers and pillow cases as well as donated fabric, however sourcing material has been a challenge.

Tracey’s work colleague Brenda Martin has been contacting our supply chain to request any surplus fabric, and she has recently received a donation from Carrington Textiles who supply fabric to the manufacturer of Sellafield Ltd’s PPE clothing.

Tracey added:
"We have a GoFundMe page for the Trafford group and have raised over £1500 so far to buy fabric. Meanwhile, we’ve had the offer of using the textiles room in a local secondary school to help production, we are trying to get more sewers signed up and I’ve been asked to help project manage the hub group.

"The community spirit, togetherness and innovative ways in how we work to support communities are vital in the process of managing this crisis."