If you've had a baby, was your baby given a knitted hat after birth? If your baby was premature, did you see a knitted blanket, a hand sewn incubator cover or was your baby wearing a knitted cardigan and hat? Has a relative or friend with dementia ever been given a twiddlemuff or had use of a fidget blanket? Was an elderly relative given a hand knitted blanket in hospital or from Social Services? Has your child been given a bag of beads in hospital? If the answer to these is yes then that item would have been hand made by a volunteer probably using their own money.

For the last two years we have been sewing and knitting for members of our community free of charge. We have provided everything from incubator covers, baby hats, cardigans, bonding squares, bags of courage for the children's oncology departments, twiddlemuffs and fiddle blankets for patients with dementia in the community and nursing homes as well as those in hospital, forget me not flowers to raise awareness of dementia, blankets for the elderly given out by social services, cribs, angel gowns, remembrance teddies, a range of specialist bags to help cancer patients be more mobile when on treatment and so much more besides. We use hundreds of balls of wool every week, loads of material as well as lots of other items to sew on the twiddlemuffs and busy blankets, baby buttons and more besides. Some of this is donated but the rest has to be bought. As you can imagine this costs a lot of money. We donate our time free of charge and that will never change but really need help with the rest. We do some fundraising but it isn't enough. If you believe you have been helped by a volunteer or someone you know may have been or even if you would like this to continue please help us by donating a sum of money, however small. The average ball of wool costs about £1.50 and would make 4 newborn hats. To make a twiddlemuff uses a little more and needs safe items to sew onto it. A jacket for a baby needs 2-4 buttons costing about 20p each. A bag of courage for a child with cancer costs about £1in fabric and cord. A hat for a homeless person costs about £2. An adult blanket costs about £10, half that for a lap or wheelchair blanket.

We are always happy to take any wool, bedding or buttons of any size but after two years it's getting harder and harder to find people who have wool etc to donate

Please donate and help us carry out this voluntary work. Every penny will be used to purchase supplies.

If you would like to see what we have made so far and where we delivered all the items made so far to, please see our Facebook page which contains loads of photos and information

https://www.facebook.com/GlossopdaleCharityCrafters/

THANK YOU!