Seamstresses sew for African kids
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POLSON — Tiny dresses made from pillowcases with ribbon ties on the shoulders and colorful shorts for little boys hang on a clothesline at First Citizen’s Bank.
Usually children’s clothes aren’t on display at the bank, but these are a special project of bank employees Cindy Beebe, Jessie Miller, Theresa Kinyon with help from Beebe’s mom, Charline Warren, and sister-in-law Bev Philo.
Kinyon came up the idea when in one of “the numerous sewing catalogs” she receives, she saw a project called Little Dresses for Africa. A group of women who had been vacationing in Africa saw children wearing dresses way too small for them. They set up a 501c3 organization to provide dresses for little girls.
Their website, littledressesforafrica.org, includes a pattern for making small dresses out of pillowcases, but they stress any simple pattern will do as long as no buttons, zippers or snaps are used since they’re hard to repair or replace in Africa. They also need shorts for little boys.
Kinyon mentioned the project to fellow employees at First Citizens, and they decided to sew on Feb. 20. Setting up an assembly line of a serger, two sewing machines, an ironing board and hand stitchers, the sewing crew made 22 little dresses and 15 pairs of shorts.
Kinyon, a quilter, contributed leftover fabric and thanked her mother-in-law for scouring the second hand stores in town for pillowcases to turn into little dresses.
Beebe said she could just see little African children with skinny legs and big dark eyes smiling at some new clothes.
As the website says, “We’re not just sending dresses, we’re sending hope.”
