Medical scrubs being produced by opera costume designers, Macnas and ICA

One of the largest rural organisations in the State has signed up with an opera and theatre costume designer to sew medical scrubs for nursing home and other care workers.

More than 500 of the Irish Countrywomen's Association's 8,500 members have volunteered for the Sew Scrubs for Ireland project, the brainchild of former head of costume at the Gate Theatre Sinead Lawlor.

“I have nurses in the family and I was shocked that even big hospitals didn’t have enough scrubs because people who didn’t normally necessarily wear them to work every day were now wearing them,” she says.

“And they couldn’t be ordered for good money as well as people being faced with coming home and not having the time to get them washed and dried.”

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Ms Lawlor said she knows “so many brilliant makers and doers”, skilled in design, material cutting and making.

They also started with a GoFundMe campaign and just over €8,000 has been raised in the three weeks since then which has provided enough for about 1,000 scrub sets which normally cost between €30 and €40.

Scrubs are going to nursing homes in the local area of ICA members doing the sewing and the Dublin Capuchin Day Centre for the homeless is also among the recipients.

Good idea

Much of the cutting is done in Dublin but Macnas Theatre group in Galway are also involved, a tailor in Wexford is cutting along with costumers and fashion professionals in Cork.

“Scrubs are really difficult to make, you need to be a highly proficient sewer and maker and a large number in the ICA would meet that requirement. So it seemed like a really good idea to reach out to ICA management because they’re in every community in the country, they have local knowledge and they are known for a high level of craftsmanship.”

National President of the ICA Josephine Helly put the call out to members and the association contributed an additional €4,000 to the effort which secured 990 metres of polycotton in 30 metre rolls.

“We should get 295 sets out of that and the people who make them are distributing them to nursing homes in their area,” with sewing underway in a number of counties.

Not all of the volunteers have yet got fabric and Ms Ms Helly from Ardrahan, Co Galway says members “are crying out for more material”

Fabric however is like gold dust Ms Lawlor says. “It’s a global crisis and there are serious stresses on the supply chain,” and major fabric hubs like Italy and France are off limits for now. In England many fabric suppliers have also closed.

Such is the demand that it took two weeks for the fabric they had ordered to arrive. It came on Thursday and has now been cut and sent out to a national army of sewers.

It takes about four metres per set of scrubs depending on the width of the fabric which needs to be washable at 60 degrees and must have minimum 35 per cent cotton content and polycotton is the standard fabric used.

Ms Helly said a lot of the ICA’s members are cocooning and sewing scrubs would be something for them to do. Ms Lawlor said they wanted to empower people to help their community, “particularly people who are self-isolating and cocooned or otherwise disenfranchised from their normal routines”.