Tuesday evening group run with 3 goodgymers warming up at Bodyline Studio before setting off in the windy streets of Ealing towards Acton Town. Sevan, Liuba and Steph Ducat were meeting up with Michelle and Anita who cycled their way to Acton West London Office for a upcycling workshop with Ealing Repair Cafe. Mohamed shortly made his way too. Mary and her crew welcomed 6 goodgymers indoors and away from the wind. Tonights task was filling draught excluders and finishing off bags made from T-Shirts with strings. Deal sealed in the windbreak market as the team finished roughly 10 draught excluders. During our workshop, a lot of chatting of bands and their skinny jeans which looked a lot like the draught excluders...Rod Stewart trouser style 🤘🤘. Sevan had one that was in a weird shape and different colour...banana style. There was also small battles going on : no one was hurt...Battle of the draughters!!A first for Anita and you could see that she was in her element.Cracked on with marking and cutting jeans. Steph Ducat brought a box of chocolates : for what reason? Was he trying to get rid of a leftover Xmas chocolate box as Mary mentioned. Or was he telling the runners/cyclists : you will need to run and cycle more to burn these calories!No in fact it was time for Steph Ducat to rock as Sevan presented him with the 500 good deed trophy/totem. Yes reached my 500 good deeds tonight in 22 months, well 21 months and 1 week!! After a great workshop,the 6 goodgymers were blown back out in the streets of Acton...4 running back in the direction of Ealing Broadway and 2 cycling back to Hounslow and Richmond.

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.

The fifth chapter of GoodGym x Ealing Repair Cafe collab brought three new apprentices of upcycling to Acton: Roberta, Nishy and a guest from Tower Hamlets: Sian. While Sevan, Steph and Kash - not newbies to the sewing workshops - felt comfortable with their speedy 4.5km run from Ealing Broadway, it was Claire who was the most comfortable with the sewing machine. Like a boss - that's how Claire looked in front of the apparatus which others approached with caution, suspicious about whether it can sew their fingers to the fabric. Spoiler alert: no one left the workshop with holes in their fingers.

Mary from Ealing Repair Cafe gave us a choice of two tasks:

1) make draught excluders from old jeans to give them out to residents at the Reduce & Recycle Hub 2) make drawstring bags from old, colourful running t-shirts for the South Ealing Community Food Cupboard)

It was a night full of discoveries!

• Roberta and Sian joined the growing circle of people who know what the draught excluders are. They achieved enlightenment by experiencing the draught excluderness first-hand: by sewing jeans and stuffing them with socks.
• Sevan learned that there is actually a signal in the Donut Factory (Mary's secret facility where she runs the workshops with us).
• We all discovered that the material of Ealing Eagles t-shirts can make running easier, but not necessarily sewing.
• Steph looks stunning in cropped Ealing Eagles tank tops (see the photos).
• Roberta looks stunning even with three legs (see the photos).

The enjoyable evening session with Mary and Lone resulted in six finished drawstring bags for the Food Cupboard and two draught excluders (that's a pair of jeans legs!) for the Reduce & Recycle Hub at Acton Market.

We will team up once more with Ealing Repair Cafe this year before December, so watch this space for more workshops! Next week we are back in Acton to distribute leaflets for next month's Reduce & Recycle Hub - sign up to join us!

What do draught and sausages have in common? It is not the draught beer and wurst at Oktoberfest, oh no! It's a bit too early for that and a bit too far West. Tonight a GoodGym trio, Sevan, Kash and Klaudia, who came to her first session 🥳, set off on a journey to East from Ealing Broadway. Despite totalling a decent distance (8 km on the way there and back), they haven't made it to Germany but stopped in Acton to meet Mary, Yvonne and Lone from Ealing Repair Cafe, a trio who fights waste by teaching people to repair and upcycle clothes by using patching or darning techniques. What a bunch of legends!

Yet another trio, Claire, Emmanuella and Kate (AKA the Punctual Ones), were already at the task location, The Doughnut Factory, accompanying the Ealing Repair Cafe team in creating useful stuff from old stuff using stuffing techniques. They were cutting and sewing old jeans legs, then filling them with scraps and damaged blankets to make draught excluders for the clients of Ealing Soup Kitchen. Those oversized sausage-shaped objects of varying sizes and densities could be placed at the bottom of draughty doors or windows to keep the cold away in the upcoming winter months. The idea was to use upcycling to provide a low-cost option for vulnerable people to make their homes cosy without spending too much on heating! 🧣

Partway through the task, one more trio arrived, who had to use a series of secret knocks to get inside the headquarters of The Secret Sausagety (Sevan gave me a look when I wanted to use The Secret Sausagety as the report title, which I resisted doing, but I couldn't resist using that pun!). Chris, Lena and Marta joined the fun, learning how to use a sewing machine, practising their hand-sewing techniques, and playing tug-of-war in an attempt to stuff three rolled blankets into a single jeans leg. It was intense!

As a result of an exceptionally long (time flies when you are having fun!) over 90-minute Tuesday evening session, ten draught excluders have been created, and - oh boy, is it finally complete? - the upcycled GoodGym flag has been finished! A shoutout to Claire, who has hand-sewn the last two pieces - the GoodGym logo elements - to the flag fabric. Claire became the GoodGym Ealing legend forever in the crafts department! 🏆

Well done to the entire team for their thirst to learn new skills and use them for good while reducing the waste of damaged clothes, and special kudos to Klaudia for sticking out till the end at her first session, then running back to EB with the group 🙌

A massive thank you to all three members of Ealing Repair Cafe for their fantastic workshop idea and for teaching GoodGymers sewing. 🙏 Fingers crossed that the clients of Ealing Soup Kitchen will like the draught excluders and keep warm during the winter.

If you loved the Ealing Repair Cafe workshop, you may be interested in the following:

• Help Mary promote the reduce-reuse-recycle mindset by joining next week's GoodGym task in Acton - sign up here!
• Check out what other events Ealing Repair Cafe has planned
• Check out the brand new Ealing Library of Things, where you can borrow useful equipment without buying it - what about a sewing machine for your new project?

Tonight, our group run attendees were sew happy with the task, that they all stayed for an extra 30 minutes to tie up some loose ends and finish off their draw string bags. In total 15 bags were created which task owner Mary will donate to Ealing Soup Kitchen to give to their clients 🛍️

While everyone was excited about the task, there were some experienced needleworkers, some lapsed and others who'd never sewn a stitch in their lives. Mary and Yvonne came prepared with t-shirts which would otherwise have gone for textile recycling and were ready to be given a new life. They explained - more than once - how to slice and dice a t-shirt into 4 bags, using the features of the original garment to easily transform it.

Clare meanwhile inherited the job of hand-sewing the GoodGym flag, making good progress with the letters and also cursing the slippery material of the GGs. Who chose that spangly material is lost in the mists of time. On our next visit, completing the GoodGym flag and the GG challenge will pass on to someone else.

By the end of the task, almost everyone had created at least one bag end to end and learned the skill of threading cord through a hem or waistband. Emmanuella also became a magician, turning a t-shirt into yarn which was a bit like reversing the manufacturing process. Reusing and recycling in act(i)on 💪

See Emmanuella's trick here https://www.instagram.com/p/C-6EiobhtQl/

The run from Ealing Broadway to the office of Action West London in Acton takes 4km each way. Tonight was not one of our easy-going group run evenings as we really wanted to make it on time. Mary, Yvonne and Lone - all the big names of Ealing Repair Cafe - prepared a special workshop for GoodGym Ealing! It was a follow-up of our previous collab with Mary. We really wanted to finish the upcycled GoodGym flag and give more GoodGymers the opportunity to learn how to sew and create more bunting for Acton Market.

How much bunting does Acton Market, Acton Carnival and community groups need?

"My friend says: there is never enough... But my cousin says: burn it all!" - Mary

We took Mary's friend's perspective and created four strings of bunting out of old jeans! Steph and Sevan cut the fabric into triangles, and Divya operated the sewing machine.

In the meantime, Paul and Kash took up the challenge to sew the GoodGym logo to the flag's background.

"How confident you guys are with hand sewing?"
"I had it in school." - Paul

Indeed, Paul's and Kash's sewing was supposed to be all manual and needed some coordination between the duo to not hurt the quality of the flag (and not hurt each other).

"You can remove the pins once you have sewn the letter. That way, you have less stabbing potential" - tip from Mary

Everyone worked with utmost concentration.

"I have never been on a task that's been so quiet." - Paul

That said, we've been bursting into laughter on several occasions, especially after hearing the pro tip about regularly stroking the thread to avoid knots. I wonder why!

Before running back to Ealing, we popped into ActOne Cinema. To watch a film? No. To use their community space? No. We chose the cinema's bar as a place to chat without noise and celebrate...

Steph's 300 good deeds!

Our famous racer, the Unstoppable Steph, raced his way to that milestone in a year and ten days. Incredible!

Next week we are running to a less remote part of Acton for an epic litterpick, followed by a GoodGym Ealing bowling party!