To Haiti With Love...

What Can I Give?

Even when we think we have very little and even less to give, there is almost always someone, somewhere, that is considerably worse off. I think that going without a few comfort items lately, has allowed our family to realize just how good we really do have it here. Not just one pair of jeans but four. Not just a t-shirt but 9 or 10. Dresses? 4 or 5 and shoes..... don't even get me started.

A friend of ours from church was telling me about these cute little dresses that she and her granddaughter were making to send to Africa for the little girls. From this outreach to Africa came the idea for our school project of Terin, Payton, and I making dresses for Haiti. Our church has a team heading there in late December to assist in some rebuilding projects as well as serving the community with a medical clinic. What a great opportunity for our girls to help in a real way that they can not only understand but participate in.

The project began Saturday with the lesson and a first personal practice dress. They learned how to measure and find the selvage edge. They practiced stitching straight on some scrap fabrics and folding it over and stitching it again.

They learned the lost art of ironing, (it's a hot appliance that flattens material, just in case) sewed hems, and made casings for elastic. Then each of the girls made their first gift dress.

They each had the opportunity to learn the unfortunate practice of seam ripping, which is as we were taught a very important thing to learn and practice because, it happens.

The girls, one in particular, were wiped out after 5 hours of standing to make their dresses. While we were fortunate enough to have three machines to work with, we had to work around the issue of the gathering height table. This required that we stood at the machines to sew.

The girls managed to complete 2 dresses each, and plan on finishing more before the trip. Be looking for updates and new dress embellishments. Terin has great ideas to spruce up this simple little dress.

We have challenged the boys to participate in this gift to Haiti. Their plan is fundraising to get money and possibly buy shoes to send down. They are still checking with the contact to find out if that is the need. Some of their ideas for this are selling baked good like zucchini bread, banana bread, and beer bread, and offering yard clean up services. Feel free to place your baked goods order right here on my blog (requests accepted :0) )and more importantly, pray for and encourage these kids as they develop this heart for others.