Sheffield area sewing circle lands cash donation from former Sheffield United owner for facemask project

Shelagh Cheetham, aged 62, from Dronfield, currently leads a team of 140 sewers who have between them made more than 8,000 facemasks.

So successful has ‘Shelagh’s Sewing Circle’ become that they are now sending masks all over the UK to places including Liverpool, Norwich and London.

And in order to help them expand even further, former Sheffield United owner Kevin McCabe has donated £10,000 to them so they can get even more to the front-line workers who need them.

Shelagh said: “I never thought there would be this much interest when we first got going. It has just captured people’s imagination.

“After two weeks in we had made 777 masks, six weeks in we have made 8,142 and I woke up this morning to orders for another 1,000 masks. It is getting bigger by the day.”

Shelagh started the project in late March after becoming worried that the care sector would find it difficult to source PPE, and quickly knocked up 110 masks for a local home.

She then got an order for 170 more masks from two other homes in the area and realised she couldn’t do it all herself.

As well as sewing, volunteers are also helping her with delivery and administration and she is also taking donations of good cotton curtains, bedding or other fabric.

Shelagh said that not only has the project helped the thousands of key workers who have benefitted from the masks, it has also helped her volunteers feel like they are contributing to the national effort.

“A lot of the ladies say it has given them something to do during what has been a difficult time for many people with isolation and loneliness,” she said.

“Some of them haven’t been able to see their husbands who are in care homes or cuddle their grandchildren but they say helping with this has given them a purpose.

“It has been amazing and very humbling.”

Anyone who wants to volunteer or to donate fabric should contact Shelagh’s Sewing Circle on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or call 07947 507603.