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Saturday, May 29, 2010

Pillowcase Dresses for Africa!

In all my spare time (just typing those words make me chuckle), I enjoy reading other blogs.  I enjoy reading about crazy happenings in other families and also enjoy reading what other people are learning.  I enjoy seeing what God is doing in their families.  To see how He is moving, how He is stirring others hearts.
The other day, I ran across a post about a project that really tugged at my heart.  The project is to create pillowcase dresses for little girls in Africa.  
Kristen at We are THAT family, wrote a beautiful post about her new DIFO (Do It For Others) project to help Little Dresses in Africa, a non-profit organization that sends pillowcase dresses to girls in Central Africa. Becuase AIDS is such a pandemic in Africa, many of these young girls end up raising their younger siblings.  
Just raising my little one can be trying some days, I can't imagine what it must be like to be a young girl and to be solely responsible for the feeding and care of those younger than me.  Little Dresses in Africa works to minister to these girls, providing dresses for them to wear, planting seeds in their heart about Jesus and about how beautiful and worthy they are in His eyes.
What a special thing for us to be able to help with - to help a little girl feel worthy, to feel pretty, to feel loved, to know that she is enough.  Isn't that what we all are striving to feel?  To feel that we are simply enough?
For me, helping others has always made me feel happy.  As a little girl, I always loved to make "gifts" for my friends.  I loved to see the twinkle in their eyes, when I gave them something that I had spent time making, just for them.  What an exciting idea to be able to bring that same twinkle to a little girl who is halfway across the world!
Kristen posted that her goal was to get 100 dresses made by the end of July.  She has people donating supplies and people donating time to sew.  I had a hard time finishing her post because all I wanted to do was say "yes!  I want to help!"  Finally, after stepping away from the computer for a while, I was able to return to her post, finish reading it and then send her an e-mail.
I wanted to join in on her project.  I asked and she resounded with "Yes, yes, yes!!"  I want to create my own blog goal.  To help 50 more little girls get pretty new dresses!  This would bring her total to 150 dresses!  WOW! 
So, that is what we are going to do.  We are going to make 50 pillowcase dresses.  By the end of July.
How is this going to happen, seeing as how I have a husband, little one who just turned one and work full-time outside the home, traveling across the country?  
Well, I'm not quite sure....
But, I do know that God has placed this on my heart and it is what I want to try and do.  And, I know that He can work miracles.
As a family, we are not in the position to adopt at this moment, but we can help lots of kiddos in other ways - I'll start by helping them get cute little dresses!  Seriously, is there something more fun for a little girl than new clothes?  
All that to say, WE NEED YOUR HELP!
June 1-30 Pillow Case / Materials Drive
Items you can send for the project:
  • New or Gently used Pillowcases - we need 50 +
  • Double Bias tape
  • 1/2 inch elastic
  • thread
  • air-tight vacuum space bags
  • money to help with shipping.  We will be dividing the supplies and shipping to seamstresses.  (The seamstresses will also receive a postage-paid envelope to send the completed dresses to the organization)
If you would like to send pilllowcases or supplies, help sew some of these dresses, or if you want to complete your own pillow case dress(es), please e-mail me and I will get in touch with you!  Here is the pattern that Little Dresses for Africa recommends.  If you want to make your own dresses, don't feel that you have to use the pattern listed.  Feel free to create/design them in your own unique way and we will send them off to Africa as well!
Here we go!

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