It was a first and a last for an Ealing Repair Cafe x GoodGym Ealing collab. All 5 GoodGymers arrived on time for the first time! Early, even. On the other hand, this would be their last session of 2024 together. 3 of the today's stitchers ran from Ealing Broadway, while Nishy and Gabriela, who was at her first GoodGym session met the runners at the Doughnut Factory. Welcome to GoodGym, Gabriela! 🎉

Task owner Mary was glad to see them

"Great, you can help with the backlog!"- Mary

There was indeed a backlog, with 2 tasks to get started with. Each would produce items from reused materials for Age UK to donate to those in need.

The threaders, Nishy, Kash and Mohamed, had a pile of drawstring bags that had been sewn from waste t-shirts. The only problem was that they hadn't had their drawstring inserted yet, so they were only "bags", waiting to achieve their drawstring potential. The threaders used the secret skill, passed down through generations of Ealing Repair Cafe volunteers, to add the ties to the channels at the top of the bags, speeding through 16 of them.

Meanwhile the stuffers, Gabriela and Sevan, were working to make draught excluders to stop the cold wind from blowing under the recipients' front doors. The casing had been made with old jean legs and the GoodGymers were filling those casings with wadding and scraps of waste fabric. There were lots of different techniques to get the filling evenly distributed, including swinging the draught excluder around their heads.

Eventually, everyone moved on to draught excluder production, with each of them learning something new. Mohamed took control of a sewing machine for the first time to turn fabric into casings. Everyone else learned that running stitches wouldn't seal the open end of the draught excluders securely, so instead they needed a back stitch to strengthen the closure. No more sewing while running then 🙄

In all, the team had 16 fully completed bags and 7 draught excluders which will help the elderly in Ealing borough keep warm this winter.