February is here

Well I have come to the conclusion it is not possible to write and make all these bags. Hence the blog suffers :)I have been thinking about the difficulties we have encountered during this challenge and they are mainly to do with man/woman power and transport. I do not drive and as such have always walked everywhere. Now that my knees have given up the ghost and no hope of replacement due to a genetic disorder shanks's pony is slow ands cumbersome. Material is heavy, especially the wonderful cottons we have been donated. Nothing like the cotton bags you normally get given for free which must weigh milligrams, these bags are beautiful and substantial. It has become my role to keep everyone supplied with all their needs i.e. overlocked bags and handles, cotton for machines, needles, light bulbs when they go out on overworked domestic machines and training every time we get some new young offenders. This in itself is challenging to say the least. We can only hire the hall for 4 hours and as everything must be locked away it takes a good 45 minutes to get up and running and the same to clean up after the session leaving us 2 and a half hours during which time we get visitors who must be accomodated. Not a lot of time. Because of this all materials and scissors, rulers, tape measure etc etc. have to be carried back and fore and believe me Cilfrew is well and truly built on the side of a mountain; you are constantly either going up hill or down hill unless you go sideways and then you get nowhere. I was donated an old pushchair which I have taken to lowering down the steep hill rather than dragging my huge Ikea bag along side me which caused the disintegration of the base and more washing of material than necessary. I might look a sight but where needs must the devil drives - or is it necessity is the mother of invention? So every session I must carry down to the community centre dozens of overlocked bags and handles, which I have alone had to cut out and overlock and then carry them all back again to sort out at which stage what is and treat accordingly. I have also had to wash a lot of material before it can be used; this means transportation up the mountain of the unwashed material and transportation back down of the clean stuff. If it was not for Daniel and his trusty steed, oops motorbike, I would be in trouble. Every session Daniel transports bags and sewing machines up to my abode and deposits them outside my home for me when I get back up the mountain wheezing and gasping. But we are on our way to 600 bags and on a roll. So no time for more typing, these hands are made for sewing at the moment. I cannot afford to waste time :)Not enough hands on board - we have had a fantastic response for material and sewing machines but sadly no bodies to join with us.

Saturday 30th January 2010

We had our open day on Thursday 21st January and I think it may have been a success. Duffryn Clydach environmental group turned out to support us as did Mo Green from the MOreGreen Project at Swansea. A lady from Bridgend came to take a pack of bags which she will sew at home and the National Autistic Society came. The Young Offenders team was present and I have to say that we are finding these boys a pleasure to work with. Hesitant at first about sewing bags, they have taken to it like ducks to water and it is lovely to be able to work together on a project which all are enthusiastic about. It has crossed my mind a lot during the last week - The life of a long distant bag runner is a busy one - This is a mammoth task and one not made easier by the fact we cannot leave anything out in the Community Centre when we work there as all has to be cleared and set up the next time we go there. However we have decided we do not moan but make the best of what we have and get on with the job. My nephew Daniel is there for the long haul and is a blessing when it comes to problems with the machines. He is also sewing very well to date. We now have 2 overlockers which are helping us enormously and we now realise how much material we have to collect for this task. We had 6 separate donations of material this week much of which is excellent but we run short co9nstantly of plain material for the backs of the bags as this is the side that will have the transfer printed logo. Too many fronts and not enough backs is the constant cry. We have made some beautiful bags from Laura Ashley samples and I think they are going to be the up market logo bags when we eventually hand them over. I watched one of the young boys working with us last week tenderly folding each completed bag into a box and counting them and realised even young boys admire beautiful materials and seeing objects being created out of nothing. This week we should have completed 300 hundred bags. I had a telephone call from a lady in Swansea who desperately wants to come up and join us for a day or 2 and wants to crochet plastic bags. Hurrah, a break through, someone as mad as me :) I now have to look for transport to get her to us. Where there is a will there is a way they tell me. Today I had my whole family to visit, so today I live in normality, tomorrow it is back to the sewing machine and onwards and upwards.

January 19th 2010

I must remember - tomorrow is my aunts 80th birthday. Yesterday through the article in the South Wales Evening Post we had offers of another 2 sewing machines and material. I was despairing at the end of last week that we would not have enough material but Alan Powis brought us some from the Ethel Street events committee which tided us over the weekend and yesterday The National Autistic Society, namely Alun and Claire together with 2 of their clients, Ben and Brian brought us some rolls of just what we needed, beautiful material. Thank you all. I also had a visit at the Community Centre in Cilfrew yesterday from a gentleman by the name of Laurie Brophy. He had been looking for me in the village and the jungle drums were bouncing by the time I got home. A strange man searching for me, but he found me and came to offer his assistance regarding my costs bill I am paying to Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council at the rate of £9.75 per week for 14 years or until I die. This amazing man is taking part in the 4 deserts endurance challenge and wanted to raise funds to pay off my debt. It was amazing that this mild mannered lovely man who will be 78 next month and flies out to Chili soon is to take part in this challenge and also intends to climb 2 volcanoes while in Chili and wanted to help me because of the injustice he felt I had been subjected to. The mind boggles at acts of human kindness such as this and I was humbled and stopped sewing at my sewing machine to have a cup of coffee and swap e mails with Laurie who will now become one of our heroes :) Yesterday our factory line we set up in the Community Centre worked for the first time, except I had visitors all day. But we have our system, we have material, the world is our oyster and our target is achievable. Watch this space.

Monday 11th January 2010

Since Thursday I have continued to standardise the bags we are to make to fulfil our contract. There are many different ways of attaching handles and today we got the overlocker up and running and so on Thursday hope to get a small production line going to see how many we can do per hour working together. I wonder if that is a feasible option. There are many jobs to go into the completion of a bag - especially a bag made from recycled material. Firstly the material needs to be sorted and if curtains we need to separate the lining from the curtain; take off the heading tape and open all hems and seams. If the material is to be washed this is the stage it is done. When clean and the material is ironed flat the bags are then cut out, We have decided to cut out all lining or cream cotton handles as this material is thinner than some of the curtain fabric, therefore easier to sew the handles on. So a lot of the lining will go for handles meaning we need more lining than curtain material. Difficult :) The next job is to cut out the bags and the handles. Each has then to be ironed to get out any creases as they are recycled material. The handles are then ironed into shape and stitched. Then the bag itself is stitched around three sides and the top hemmed. Then the handles are attached. The bag is then finally checked for cotton ends which are cut off and the bag is ironed, hopefully the final time. Each bag will be quality checked prior to being transfer printed with the logo and wording. We hope this week to start bringing in donated material and sewing machines with the help of The Autistic Society and by open day next Thursday 21st January to have production going flat out. That is the next 10 weeks used up for many of us. We are looking forward now to the open day and to achieving what we have set out to do. Watch this space. Anyone who would like to join us for our open day, we would love to see you.

Keep Wales Tidy & Cilfrew Craft Group Bags of Wales project

Today January 7th 2010 at Cilfrew Community Centre the Keep Wales Tidy Bags of Wales project started. An opportunity has been given to the people of Neath Port Talbot & surrounding areas to provide 2010 bags to Keep Wales Tidy by March 31st 2010. These bags will all be manufactured locally by volunteers and various groups. The bags will all be made out of recycled materials which means the carbon footprint will be minimal. There will be no virgin material used and each bag will be printed with the logo of Keep Wales Tidy. The whole process will be carried out by ordinary people, volunteers from all walks of life and with all manner of capabilities. Should we achieve this then we can achieve more than most people thought possible. Since September 2009 the Cilfrew Resident's Association Craft Group has been making recycled cloth bags which they hand to the local shopkeeper to alleviate the number of plastic carriers being issued. We thought that cloth bags should be issued at source when the need arises and so we started our little village project. It worked and after pumping over 1000 cloth bags into a village of approximately 900 people the number of plastic bags issued dropped from 1000 a month to approximately 50 a month.

At Cilfrew we work with the Young Offenders Team and are amazed at how these young people take to sewing. They can sew a wonderfully straight seam and are not afraid of the sewing machine as many of us appear to be. I think we can learn some bravery from these young people. Tomorrow some of the Craft Group will work an extra day with the Young Offenders as the freezing weather is making it impossible for them to do any outside work.

We have a belief in our craft group that creation of anything is important to us as people. We also speak often about how the need for money surmounts everything when a lot can be made from nothing to give a sense of achievement. We have strived to make gifts for our families and friends over the last few years and to make them to a standard that makes them exceptional and superior to a lot of shop bought products. Our bags are of a very high standard and we hope to achieve our target by March 31st. It is do or die :)

Today we had a meeting with Mark and his colleagues from the National Autistic Society at Neath Abbey and they are eager to come on board with us. The meeting was excellent and gave us as a craft group much hope that we will work together on many projects to benefit many people.

This is my first time of writing a blog for a long, long time. It is good to get discipline back in my life and each day from now until March 31st I shall not rest until I have done my 'quota' of bags. My legs may not work as they should but my mind and my hands will last me a while yet. I look forward to updating this blog and hope that the people who come on board will get out of this project, a project we are so lucky to have been given the opportunity to attempt, as much as I know we at Cilfrew will attain. We shall do wrong on our journey and we shall do right, but with a bit of luck and the help of many people, like us, we shall reach our goal.