Hello to all our lovely Tadcrafters’ team and supporters,

Now we are into September, the schools are going back, autumn is officially here and we can return to our usual routines. Our projects are changing to reflect the seasons too and we have lots of other exciting things to look forward to as well. Even with lots of people on holiday we’ve still managed to get up to quite a bit in the last month:

  • Live Interview with Georgey Spanswick at Radio York studios
  • 6 Snufflemats to RSPCA in York
  • 5 large blankets and 4 quilts to Martin House Children’s Hospice
  • 71 matching sets of heart-shaped cushions and drain bags went to St. James Hospital breast surgery ward.
  • 20 bags to St. Gemma’s Hospice
  • Bee inspections
  • Gardening
  • Salvaging at Leeds Fest site
  • 10 Personal effects bags to St. Leonard’s Hospice

 News

 “On Saturday 16th September 2023 The Barn will be hosting artist Chris Tipping in a pop-up event to help create a large-scale celebratory photographic artwork representing the Tadcaster community and its creativity. This project is part of the Tadcaster Bus Station regeneration, for which Chris is creating an original artwork for the glazed roof. Chris will be working alongside David Lindsay, a professional photographer who lives in Tadcaster. Come as a family, bring your friends, come as you are! You can dress up, dress down, bring a prop – something you have made, grown in your garden or something you simply love. Ultimately just bring yourselves. Have your portrait taken and make a brilliant contribution to our event and to this community artwork, which will be hung on the back wall of the main hall in The Barn. We will have refreshments too!”

TAD’ah! Please put this event in your diary and make sure you can spare a few minutes of your day to come along whatever your connection to Tadcrafters is. I want to see all our supporters represented in some way, with or without a twiddlemuff, hammer, beekeeper’s suit, trowel, or blanket, but definitely with a smile! Please see the flyer. There’ll also be people there from Tadcaster Creatives who are helping us to one day have an Arts Centre in Tadcaster. Please have a chat with them if you think this is a good idea.

Four of us are lucky enough to have been invited to afternoon tea at the racecourse for the BBC Radio York Make a Difference Awards ceremony on Friday 15th September, representing Tadcrafters. Please keep your fingers and toes crossed for us as we are up against some strong opposition for best community group.

Although we use as much fabric as possible to make items to be donated to worthy causes, unfortunately we cannot use it all and we are unable to store as much as we would like.  Some of the more expensive fabric (RRP often in excess of £100/m!) we sell on our Etsy store to fund our activities. We have already given away around 340kg of fabric to the Cone Exchange in Harrogate and will have more to go to Farsley Scrap Store soon.  We will be going back to Farsley Scrap Store on 7th October and to the Hebden Bridge Rag Market on 21st October to sell some of our surplus fabric.   If you fancy a trip to the Scrap Store at Sunny bank Mills in Farsley, where the Sewing Bee is filmed, you’ll find lots of crafty supplies, artistic inspiration, and a refill area.  There’s free parking close by too https://scrapstuff.co.uk/ 

As you know, we don’t like to waste anything, so Lynne and I were persuaded to join the salvagers at the end of Leeds Fest this year. We were absolutely stunned at the level of waste left behind over acres and acres of land. It looked like the campsites were still occupied as no more than a third of the tents had been taken away. There were over 500 salvagers on site collecting anything that could be rescued for re-use.  Between us we barely made a dint in the amount of rubbish that would eventually go to landfill.  If someone tells you this is OK because the tents are collected and are given to homeless people, please point out to them that only a very small proportion are usable by anybody. Thankfully there are not hundreds of thousands of homeless people in need of tents in our area.  If anybody wants to donate a tent I’m sure the homeless charities would prefer it to be given to them wrapped up in a bag rather than left for them to fetch, standing, torn and damaged in the middle of a field of rubbish, full of soiled sleeping bags, mats, chairs, wet wipes, toilet paper, food, bottles, tins and dirty socks etc. Consider the raw materials required to manufacture all this stuff, transport it across the world, then the cost of buying it and then scraping it up and disposing of it.  I was alarmed that so many people see this issue as “boring” or say things like “it happens every year-get over it”.  The world doesn’t have an infinite supply of resources and places to bury waste.  Do people really have so much money to throw away? I appreciate that festivalgoers are tired at the end of their stay and it’s a long way back to carry everything to the car that will pick them up and take them home to a good bath, but if you know of anyone who is likely to camp at a festival next year, please encourage them to plan how they will bring their belongings back home with them. Don’t be fooled that their waste is a donation to a good cause. We all have a part to play to reduce waste. It’s not OK.

On the plus side, we did bring back some brightly-coloured ripped tent fabric which we hope to make something useful out of, once we’ve washed it!

Please have a look at the calendar at the end of the newsletter for a summary of our future events.    

  

 TadCrafters Tadcaster Group Update

It seemed a bit unseasonal, but we made a good start on Christmas stockings at the August drop-in session. The birth rate in York cannot keep up with the baby hats we are making so have a break and swap to making something else for a while. The next few months will see us focus on more wintery projects such as hat and scarf sets (adult and child), hot water bottle covers, and draught excluders, as well as the ever-popular twiddlemuffs, and various types of bags. We are also going to be making a double syringe-driver bag for St. Leonard’s Hospice. If you are making patient property bags, please make sure you fold them when finished as directed in the instructions otherwise they become easily crumpled. You are putting in lots of time and effort into making something beautiful so make sure it is a delight for the person who receives it.

The next Tadcrafters drop-in session will be Tuesday 12th September. We will be visited by some important people who will be judging us for the North Yorkshire Council Community Awards, so please be nice to them!  If you are working on something that you are particularly proud of, please hang on to it until the October drop-in session but bring it along to The Barn on Saturday 16th September so you can have a photograph of yourself with it. Please see the attached flyer for TAD’ah!

We have supported the Yorkits project (making reusable, sustainable feminine hygiene kits) since Tadcrafters first started and we are proud to work in partnership with them. They have been running workshops for 10 years now, and they are going from strength to strength. Recently there have been some venue changes. They now meet every Wednesday from 9.30 – 12.00 in the Community Room at the Askham Bar Tesco and once a month on a Saturday morning from 10.00-12.00 in the Art Room at Hartrigg Oaks New Earswick in York. All are welcome to join. Saturday meeting dates are included in the calendar at the end. The next Saturday session is 25th November

For a full list of all our current projects and where to find instructions please see the list towards the end of this newsletter.

 Beekeeping Group Update

The number of the beekeepers in our team has grown well this season, but unfortunately the number of our bees has not.   We are nearing the end of what has been a disappointing second full season and following a recent inspection of our remaining hive we have decided that there is not enough honey for us to do a harvest this year and we need to leave some honey for the bees over winter.  So, if you were waiting for a jar or two, we won’t have any to sell this year.  There are a lot of beekeepers who have also had disappointing harvests too so if you like buying local honey snap it up when you see it as it’s probably going to be in short supply.  We have spotted the queen (well done Lynne!) and she is still producing lots of brood, so we hope the hive will continue to thrive and we’ll be up to full strength with two hives again next year.  We will make sure that the bees are well fed and will soon be adding some syrup feed to help with them with their winter stores and give them a good start next year.  We also have some treatments to do, to prevent diseases.  So plenty to keep us busy through September, then we leave them alone for a few months.

Local beekeeping groups in Barkston Ash and Leeds beekeepers start planning early so if you are thinking of joining the group you could check out their websites to see what training they offer.  It’s not compulsory to do the training to join our group but those who have done it have found it really useful.

If you would like to join us, just for a look or to help with regular inspections please contact us on tadcrafters@outlook.com.

 TadGrafters Wood-working Group Update

The TadGrafters are working in conjunction with Mark from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust to make flat-pack bird boxes to give to their volunteer groups working on their initiatives. If you would like to help, or just come and see what the woodworkers do, just pop along to a session.  You don’t need to bring anything with you.

The Grafters are next due to meet on Weds 13th September 1-3pm at The Barn. 

 Gardening Group update

In spite of the weather, we did manage to do some work in the Quaker Burial Ground and there are plans to extend the area planted with wild-flower seed in September. This will involve mowing the grass and scarifying the area in preparation for sowing the seed so some gardening group sessions will be held during w/c 18th September (weather permitting). We will be getting advice and assistance from Andy of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust who has already visited the QBG to take a look around the site.

Unfortunately, most of the gardening group’s plans for August were thwarted by the weather with two planned sessions at Tadcaster Primary Academy having to be cancelled because of the rain.

If you are not already a member of the gardening group and would like to get involved please contact Sue T at tadcraftersst@outlook.com and contact tadcrafters@outlook.com to be put on the mailing list.

 Sherburn Crafters Update

August was a quiet drop-in session as many of the group members were on holiday. Although the group was small, they achieved at great deal, stuffing hearts large and small, as well as making some patient property bags. It was relaxing, fun and we welcomed a new member too.

We meet on the fourth Thursday each month at the Old Girls School which is a great venue and there is space for many more people, so come and join us. See dates in calendar below NB there will be no session in September.

If you would like to joint the group just turn up at the session and email tadcrafters@outlook.com to ask to be added to the Sherburn mailing list.

List of Current TadCrafters projects 

We welcome anyone new who would like to join us but ask you to please stick to our current projects as other items can be hard to find homes for. We need to focus on a few projects at a time so we can support everyone, maintain our standards and supply items that are wanted by worthy causes, in appropriate quantities.  We are able to supply materials locally for free at our drop-in sessions and instructions are provided by email or by links if provided below; if you need help, please ask!

Sewing– supplied in kit form at the drop-off sessions

  • Personal effects bags for hospice patients and bereaved families at St. Leonard’s and St. Gemma’s
  • Syringe driver bags for hospitals and hospices
  • Drawstring book bags for the Banana box toy project
  • Liners, shields and drawstring bags for YorKits feminine hygiene kits
  • Heart-shaped cushions and drain bags for breast surgery patients (in sessions)
  • Draught excluders (in sessions)
  • Tombola items- miscellaneous kits

Knitting/crochet– yarn and needles available at the drop-off sessions

Other projects

  • If you can’t knit or sew there are non-sewing tasks such as threading drawstrings and decorating twiddlemuffs that are really useful to the team, please ask.
  • Picking-up/dropping-off supplies for people who are unable to make the sessions. Team up with someone who cannot drive or has other commitments on session days.
  • Join our woodwork, gardening, or bee-keeping groups.
  • If you are interested in doing something positive to help tackle climate change, however small, follow the Sustainable Tadcaster Facebook page. Please get in touch if we can support you to kick-start a new initiative such as running a repair café, library of things, circular economy or recycling scheme etc.

Wish list and other ways to help

  • A huge thank you to the many people who have donated many, many things to us and have kept us going. If you have some surplus that you would like donate to us please be aware that we are short of storage space so please try to stick as close as possible to our wish list, or speak to us first. Smaller donations can be made at The Barn, ideally at one of the Tuesday drop-in sessions. NB We cannot use worn, dirty or smoky clothes, fabric or yarn.  Fabric that is only fit for rags can be put directly into the collecting point outside the Salvation Army and save us a job. They have their own facilities to shred and recycle fabrics.  We welcome:
  • New or clean, nearly new polyester/cotton or other lightweight woven fabric
  • New or nearly new knitting yarn. Any colour or weight but double knitting would be great.
  • Items, especially hand-crafted ones, suitable for our tombola stalls
  • New or clean, nearly new winceyette (brushed cotton) sheets/fabric for Yorkits
  • Spectacles for Specsort who take them to people in  developing countries
  • “Gently worn” bras and new pants for “Smalls for All” http://smallsforall.org/
  • Vintage fabric, equipment and haberdashery *

*Any items not suitable or surplus to our own use we give or sell to people who really appreciate them, whilst also raising funds for our projects.

  • If you would like to make a financial donation/direct debit to help us do what we do you can do so on the Local Giving website which can be found at: https://localgiving.org/tadcrafters
  • Please share our social media posts and encourage others to join in.
  • Sign up to Easyfundraising to raise money for us at no extra cost to you when you shop online, https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/tadcrafterscic/
  • Visit our Etsy store to purchase top-quality fabric remnants that are surplus to our requirements https://www.etsy.com/shop/tadcrafters/      If you live in Tadcaster, contact us direct for a discount. NB these items are not stored at The Barn or available for viewing at sessions.
  • Support our campaign to find a place of our own. If you know of a local business that could provide us with sponsorship or free space that we could use to store goods and run workshops from please put them in touch with us.

Keep in touch

If you need to get in touch with us, and need a response, please use email. This is to protect your personal details and because messages and conversations on social media become lost. Someone will get back to you, but it might not be straight away due to other commitments. The Tadcrafters Chat Group or Sherburn Tadcrafters Chat Group is a great way to keep in touch with other Tadcrafters and be inspired. You can also follow the Tadcrafters page, (and Tadcrafters Sales page) on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and Instagram (@Tadcrafters). 

To be put on the emailing list/s (wherever you live) please request it by emailing tadcrafters@outlook.com  and add us to your list of contacts so we don’t end up in your junk. There are usually only one or two emails a month.

If you would like to be kept up to date about any of the specific group activities please email us and ask to be put on the relevant group mailing list and your email will be forwarded to the group leader.

See you soon, Su.

Directors Tadcrafters CIC: Su Morgan, Lynne Howard Sandra Levitt and Sue Tennant

Calendar

DateEventTimeLocation
Tues 12th SepDrop-in workshop10am- 3pmThe Barn, Tadcaster
Weds 13th SeptTadGrafters1-3pmThe Barn, Tadcaster
Sat 16th SeptTAD’ah! Photography session10.30am -4pmThe Barn, Tadcaster
Thurs 28th  SeptSherburn Crafters11-1pmNo session
Sat 7th OctScrap stall10am- 3pmSCRAP, Sunnybank Mills, Farsley
Tues 10th OctDrop-in workshop10am- 3pmThe Barn, Tadcaster
Tues 10th OctAGM12.30-1pmThe Barn, Tadcaster
Weds11th OctTadGrafters1-3pmThe Barn, Tadcaster
Sat 21st OctRag Market10-4pmTown Hall, Hebden Bridge
Thurs 26th  OctSherburn Crafters11-1pmSherburn Old Girls School
Sat 28th OctYorkits workshop10-12pmArt Room at Hartrigg Oaks, New Earswick, York
Tues 14th NovDrop-in workshop10am- 3pmThe Barn, Tadcaster
Weds 15th NovTadGrafters1-3pmThe Barn, Tadcaster
Thurs 23rd  NovSherburn Crafters11-1pmSherburn Old Girls School
Sat 25th NovYorkits workshop10-12pmArt Room at Hartrigg Oaks, New Earswick, York
Sun 3rd DecChristmas Market10am- 3pmKirkgate, Tadcaster
Weds 6th DecYorkits fundraising stall and display9.30am 12pmTesco Askham Bar
Tues 12th DecDrop-in workshop10am- 3pmThe Barn, Tadcaster
Weds 13th DecTadGrafters1-3pmThe Barn, Tadcaster
Thurs 28th Dec*Sherburn Crafters11-1pmSherburn Old Girls School TBC*