Saturday 12 November 2011

Me and My Sewing Machine Marathon 2

A few months ago my niece and I talked about Dress A Girl Australia and the pillowcase dresses I make and collect and she asked if I could spare some for the children in Uganda. Apparently she has a couple of friends who have an organization that helps children in Uganda. She loves volunteering and is now in the Philippines for a year to work as a Youth Development Officer volunteer for the Australian Red Cross.

She left Sydney three weeks ago and I made a commitment to her to collect 50 pillowcase dresses for these children. I still dont have a clue as to how these dresses will get there but dresses will be reserved for them I told her. From the dresses I have collected so far I can actually spare the 50 now but I thought I wanted it to be really special and be directly involved in the making so I have decided to re-allocate the 50 dresses I have to other 50 children and to make 50 pillowcase dresses myself for these Ugandan children...thus another sewing marathon is about to start.

For the next three weeks and in whatever spare time I could provide(hopefully until the end of November) I will be making dresses for the children in Uganda. 50 pillowcases from the pillowcases I have collected the past few months will be allocated to this sewing marathon project #2.
Since all pillowcases are plain in colors, I have found some fat quarters from my collection which would really look great for matching. Actually these fat quarters are one of the earliest fat quarters I bought when I was just starting to experiment on making quilts more than 10 years ago and one of the earliest lessons I learned about quilting or fabric crafting in general. I never got the chance to use these fat quarters because I actually damaged the whole pack. When I got home after buying the pack, I threw them into the washing machine for washing without thinking about the colors and realized the mistake I made only when I started to hang them to dry. What to do but I hanged on to the pack not knowing that time will come when I can put them to good use and for a very special event of making dresses for little girls around the world. I finally will be able to clear a small space in my cabinet occupied by these fatquarters and start using them for a very worthy cause....imagining a world where every little girl owned at least one dress and what if that dress was made by me!

My niece would be back in Sydney for the Christmas holidays and I hope to show her all the dresses I made for the Ugandan children.

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