THE DO GOOD PROJECT
It's been 64 days since moving everything out of the studio and into the flat. It's a 1 bed in south manchester so not ideal but very lucky that the rooms are spacious so have created a truly multi-purpose living environment for ourselves.
Things were pretty quiet over here, ticking over but quiet. I also work at Nola in manchester's northern quarter so I was busier over there as new collections were rolling in and the weather and mood in manchester were improving ready for the summer.
But like everyone else, the inevitability of lockdown was looming and we had to close the shop leaving me to move all NEMCEE means of production back home.
The first few weeks were so odd, honestly had no idea what to do with myself. I thought about starting new styles and working on a few sample pieces for the pop-up NEMCEE was due to be part of, but I couldn't muster the motivation.
Until watching a middle of the night time-filler sky news story rerun of the lady who started the "For love of scrubs" campagine. it was about 3 am (nick does nights at Tesco so the upside time zone and lack of structure led to watching a lot of news in the middle of the night...) I sat and cried at the news story of all these amazing people volunteering to make so many sets of scrubs for those on the front line. I decided that I needed to get involved and do my bit and set on looking at the fabric requirements. The pattern provided was super simple and all that was needed was a light poly-cotton mix fabric, as those on COVID wards were changing scrubs around 10 times a day to keep the germs at bay. I saw so many videos of ex-sample machinists in Manchester knocking out 10 pairs an hour on industrial overlockers and UK factories receiving donated fabric and cutting out hundreds of pairs a day.
I had absolutely no chance at matching or even making a dent on these numbers. So I got in touch with a friend whos a mental health nurse and she said they don't usually need them but to help stop the spread around the hospital/ from work to home they had been trying to get hold of sets of scrubs but the shortage left them with non-available.
So, I hatched a plan that could my capabilties to the best use. I decided to stick to the ethics of what NEMCEE was built on and make sets of hard-wearing cotton scrubs for those not on ICU wards that needed A LOT of change of clothes but for those that deserve comfortable FREE hardwearing workwear to be able to focus on their roles in the NHS.
I used the basic scrubs top pattern provided and my own #004 Slacks pattern for the trousers, I was told the tops were less important as they usually wear branded NHS tops but bottoms were usually paid for by the nurses themselves, which pandemic or not I don't is right. So my fully bound, reinforced seamed comfy slacks made sense.
The slight issue though as this is a very very small business, I still work to have an income to live on, so all of a sudden buying loads of organic cotton to make scrubs wasn't do-able money wise.
Enter the DO GOOD project, in order to cover the cost of making the sets of nice scrubs I designed the #006 jacket and added in the #004 slacks to the project, priced at cost of the item plus the cost of a set of "nice" organic cotton hardwearing scrubs.
£95 for the jacket and £110 for the slacks.
The fabric has been a challenge as so much has sold out from my supplier and the new stock is stuck on a boat somewhere between the UK and India with an unknown arrival date due to lockdown measures! But I've got a fair few nice organic fabrics to offer as well as deadstock cotton.
Since launching this so many of you have got involved, through purchasing and engaging on social media. It's been so overwhelming and I'm so thankful and grateful I get to put my abilities to some good use.
