With a Needle and Thread Great Things are Made

What started out as an idea has transformed my life and my home. When I decided I would return to Tanzania my mom suggested that over the Christmas holidays we make some dresses for the little girls at Nkoaranga. We went through all of her old sewing bins for scrapes of fabric and sent out a few emails in hopes of gathering a few more pieces. A coworker of mine provided me with fabric that her mom had been hoarding for years after convincing her she was never going to use it for anything else, to my house it came. My mom’s coworker offered to make pants and shorts for the little boys out of fabric she had laying around. We were well on our way! We spent our spare time in the evenings cutting out the patterns, sewing, and sometimes unstitching as I had sewn a few armholes shut! On the weekends we would have sewing marathons that started at 9am and went into the late hours of the evening. After they were sewn my mom would sit and hand-stitch the snaps, and her “Made with love by your Canadian Granny” tags in them. With each dress that was complete I could picture one of our little girls wearing them - I can't wait to see it this summer!

My mom is now working on a quilt that will be auctioned off at my fund raiser “Light up the Night” April 29th, 2012 at The Westin Bear Mountain in Victoria, BC.  My goal is to raise $10,000 so we can completely rewire the orphanage and install solar lighting to keep our gorgeous children safe. If we exceed our fundraising goals, we will also be able to install solar lighting in the hospital maternity ward, saving the lives of women and preventing children from being orphaned in the first place. Check out the details of the project here. 

My mom has spent time at the fabric store carefully selecting just the right colours for her quilt, countless hours upstairs in her sewing room laying out the fabric, designing the women, their outfits, their head pieces, and has just began to lay pieces on top of each other. As she begins to sew them together they come to life. I can see the ladies on the quilt as vividly as I see the ladies in my village back “home”. This morning she was up bright and early at 4:30am laying the colours out on the last lady, and entitling her quilt “The Mosiac Ladies”. With each new piece she cuts and lays down the quilt transforms. Through her talent, her time, and love for the children at Nkoaranga she will change their lives!

What started out with an idea has now transformed her life and home, and it becomes evident that with a needle and thread great things are made.