The community crafters who add love to every stitch

A group of women laugh as they busy themselves at a table strewn with crocheted blankets, hand-crafted tote bags and knitted toys.

Down the corridor, volunteers sort balls of wool, while in a cutting room, another lines up fabric and instructions for period pouch kits.

This is the headquarters of Crafting for Communities, a charity which evolved from local crafters making scrubs for healthcare staff during the Covid pandemic.

Their volunteers now produce about 5,000 items a month for local organisations, which are checked, bagged, then dispatched by volunteers across Birmingham and the Black Country, Staffordshire and Worcester.

"Every stitch has got love in it, and the people who make it know how much joy it gives to others," said chief executive and treasurer Trish Bradley.

George Westley, fundraising and engagement manager at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust's charity Well Wishers, described the charity's work as "marvellous".

"It's just amazing and makes such a huge difference to so many services here," he said.

The charity's headquarters, tucked away in the old maternity hospital behind Mary Stevens Hospice in Stourbridge, is bursting with handcrafted items produced by about 100 volunteers.

Dementia dolls are piled up in a storeroom next to boxes of marble mazes, sensory toys, end-of-life-care kits and zipped toiletry bags.

"During Covid we were making scrub bags and scrubs and the ear savers for hospitals," Bradley explained.

"Then the knitters and crocheters wanted to get involved as well, so we started sending toys and teddies to the children's ward because their children were not having any visitors."

Once scrubs were no longer needed, hospitals and hospices began reaching out for other items, such as incubator mattresses and covers.

A small nucleus of helpers from around Dudley "just got bigger and bigger", and the charity was born and moved into its building in 2021.

All the makers and volunteers give hours of their time for free to help those going through difficult times.

"I'm sure some of them don't go to sleep," Bradley smiled.

"We wait until we're asked for certain things and then we design it, test it, make prototypes, get it approved and made into kit form for our makers."

It is an extensive operation, with 21 hubs stretching from Perton in south Staffordshire to Halesowen and Kidderminster in Worcestershire.

On a Wednesday, the charity checks and bags items to be packaged for delivery by volunteer drivers, who take out supplies and pick up the things that have been made.

It donates not only hospitals and hospices, but also schools, care homes, funeral directors and baby banks, to name a few.

Through helping the community, volunteers say they have forged a community of their own that has brought solace to many involved.

Pauline Guest, from Kinver, Staffordshire, sells makers' items to raise essential funds at craft fairs with her husband Stan.

"I'm absolutely besotted with the place because I think it's for what it does for people is just amazing," the 74-year-old said.

"The people are lovely. They care about you and they care about other people and what other people want and need."

Tracy Bennett, who also volunteers at the charity's headquarters, said: "I suffer really bad with mental health and going to strange places, meeting different people.

"You come here, and it just lifts you."

Having worked in catering, at first she took on the role of filling the kettle and keeping everyone supplied with drinks, and then began to help with bagging items for the cutting room.

"Knowing that you're lifting somebody, you're making somebody else happy and and that's just a positive thing in itself," she grinned.

The charity has been providing monthly drops to Walsall's Well Wishers charity for about a year, including knitted teddies, twiddle muffs for dementia patients, and paired items, such as love hearts, for those in palliative care.

"One would stay with the person who is end-of-life and the other one would go with the family members when that person has passed away," Westley explained.

"Sometimes they come up with a family of little elves, or little animals."

Recently she heard from a family who had lost a young mum to cancer.

"They said her children got so much comfort from having those knitted elves," she said.

Guest remembered the lengths volunteers went to to replace a toy for a 12-year-old girl whose mum had died.

"The little toy had gone with the mom and she couldn't get over the grief," she said.

"These people, they broke their neck to find out who knit that toy and they found them and they knit it, and I tell you, that day we were all in tears.

"We had to give that little girl a bit of comfort and that's what we're about."

Kerry Crook, head teacher of Blanford Mere Primary School in Kingswinford, said items such as weighted blankets and sanitary pouches have been "truly invaluable".

"The care and commitment shown by Crafting in the Communities have had a lasting impact on our school community," she added.

"We are incredibly grateful for everything they do to support our children."

Working in a deprived part of Birmingham helped chair of trustees Vicky Thomas, a school technology head, realise the difference such donations made.

"I've had some of our children, who are more wayward children, be involved in making some of some things to help raise funds for the charity and it helped to settle those children down a little bit," she added.

"So it kind of goes full circle.

"I'm just so proud that we've gone from just doing something during Covid to help the NHS, to the amount of different settings that we have and the amount of different people that we help.

"It's absolutely phenomenal how well the charity has grown."

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