AS ARCTIC weather hits Swindon, volunteers are busy stitching warm fleecy blankets for the homeless.

The team at Dressability, a charity that makes alterations to disabled people’s clothes, is hard at work after a chance conversation with another charity revealed a desperate need.

Manager Sharon Tombs explained they had donated some items they no longer needed to the Gateway Furniture Project and while talking with a colleague she learned that homeless charity Threshold Housing Link was in need for blankets for people sleeping rough.

So she got in touch with one of Dressability’s fabric suppliers, HO Bowley in Loughbrough, to see if they could help. “I rang them and asked for some fleece and they sent two huge rolls of black fleece to make blankets.”

Not only did the firm supply the fabric free, it also organised for it to be delivered to Dressability’s base in West Swindon.

“Our volunteers have got these huge rolls and they are cutting them up and hemming them,” Sharon told the Advertiser this week. So far a dozen have been made from half a roll so she thinks they will be able to make approximately 50 blankets.

While the charity’s seamstresses adapt clothing for people with disabilities, other volunteers create useful items like discreet bags for medical equipment and warm covers for people who need to go out in their wheelchairs in cold or inclement weather.

It is these volunteers whose skills are being used to make the warm, but lightweight blankets.

“All the charities really help each other,” said Sharon. “While our core business is helping people with disabilities, I have to say that when people are homeless, that is a kind of disability. It is about helping our local community really.”

Threshold provides an outreach service to street sleepers in Swindon as well as an emergency hostel, a substance misuse programme and other services to help homeless people.