Fifth grader Hannah Curtis listened well when her mother Danille asked her during the winter to find something non-electronic to keep herself busy. Hannah searched online and ended up taking on a larger project than many adults would. She read about groups that make dresses out of pillowcases for young girls in Third World countries, and she plotted to make 100 or so dresses.
The project grew. On Monday, a day with no school, Hannah, with help from 14 other people, completed 250 dresses. She has fabric for another 250 and hopes to have them finished by June. “Hannah latched on to it. She’s always been a dress-up girl,” her mother said.
Hannah has been sewing since second or third grade. “I really like helping people and I really like sewing,” she said.
She has done a lot of sewing with the project, and she’s learned other things as well. Responsibility was the first thing she named as a lesson learned. She also had practice speaking in public. She first did a presentation on the project for her 4-H club, the Hardin Clovers. She spoke with the Mission Stitching group at her home church, First United Methodist in Jefferson. She even stood up and talked about the project in front of the entire congregation.
The result was enough donated pillowcases and fabric (it takes about a half-yard of fabric for each dress) for 500 dresses!
Then it was time to push her communication skills, and her mother didn’t step in and do it for her. Hannah made arrangements with Bev Nolte of the Iowa/Nigeria Partnership, a program of the Iowa Conference of the United Methodist Church , for the dresses to be taken on a mission trip to Nigeria in June.
On the sewing bee Monday, Hannah had help from her younger sister Grace, who is in third grade and already learning to sew, from her mother and her grandmother Lora Smalley, and from church women who have known her since she was a baby. Hannah is thinking of holding a second work day to finish the project before June.
“I’m so proud of Hannah. This is a huge project for someone her age. Although we didn’t start out to make 500 dresses, the idea caught on and the supplies came from all over the county,” her mother said.
“I’m so thankful Hannah chose to use her talent and ability to help others not so fortunate. That’s an important lesson.”
