ATFV answered an SOS from the Children’s Wards over the summer; bubble guns were required! We like a challenge and so the call was answered – a little bit of fundraising magic later and £400 raised and then spent on 22 bubble guns, 10 light cubes, 8 cool air fans, and more bubble fluid than you could shake a stick at! 

Upon delivering these items Play Leader Lisa shyly asked me if we could help to buy proper smock tops for her and her team of play nurses as, unlike everybody else working at the hospital, they are not provided with uniform by Facilities. Lisa also needed help find someone to embroider or print a new Play Team logo on the new kit. 

Feeling rather good that Lisa was finally telling us what she needs without the need for me to drag it out of her, and thinking that this would be a relatively simple but expensive mission I accepted the challenge…I had until the start of October to sort it, Lisa had already identified the tops via Amazon, what could go wrong?

Let’s just say it has been an absolute nightmare with supply issues being compounded by a colour clash with just about every other type of hospital worker making it almost impossible to purchase the tops Lisa needs…

…so we aren’t going to purchase them…we are going to make them ourselves!! There will be more on The Great Hospital Smock Fiasco in our next issue but for now a big thank you to Liz @ Simply Elegant for coming up with the idea of making the tops ourselves and sourcing the patterns, materials and, crucially, the seamstresses required to make it happen!!