A WOMAN who lost two husbands to cancer has used scraps of material from her son's soft furnishings company to raise money in their memory.

Brenda Callister, 69, of Albany Road, Darwen, started making and selling scarves just a few months ago, but is now being inundated with orders from all her friends.

Using fabric otherwise thrown away by her son Geoffrey Ainsworth's firm, R U Comfy, in Henry Lane, Blackburn, Brenda turns the waste into home-made scarves, which she sells for £3.50 each.

Her main customers have been her dancing pals, who she meets twice a week at St Paul's Church, Higher Audley Street, Blackburn, raising £500 so far.

No stranger to fundraising, Brenda has also organised raffles and other fundraising ventures, raising well over £1,000 for the East Lancashire Hospice.

Her first husband, Thomas Ainsworth, died of bladder cancer, aged 41, in 1975, leaving behind four children, before the hospice was founded.

It was not until after her second husband, Neville Chambers, who had kidney cancer, and her sister Ivy, who had breast cancer, died that she began fundraising.

Brenda, who has been married to Jeff Callister for the past 13 years, said: "When my first husband Thomas died of cancer in 1975 there were no services to raise money for, but when my second husband and sister went the same way, I got personally involved with the hospice, who had cared for them.

"I wanted to do something a bit different, and I think more people should make things out of scrap.

"It is a fantastic way to raise money for charity. This stuff would have otherwise been thrown away.

"The scarves are beautiful. Everyone comments on them when I wear them. It's funny really, I don't even have one of my own.

"Every time I wear one, someone says I like that', and I tell them they can buy it off me. So I take it off and it's theirs.

"I end up with my old, thin, boring scarf on, while everyone else I know walks around with my lovely hand-made ones."

For more information, call Harry Grayson at the hospice on 01254 660900.