Little Dresses for Africa on Rednesday!

     This Rednesday I decided I needed to get back to work on my “Genie’s 100 Dress Challenge.” Earlier this year, after reading about the needs of the orphans in Africa, I set for myself the goal of making 100 pillowcase-type dresses for the Little Dresses for Africa Charity.  If you are interested in reading more about the project and seeing some of the dresses I have made along with photos of some of the children in their dresses, there are lots of entries listed on my right hand sidebar...”Little Dresses for Africa” and “100 Dress Challenge."  I was going great guns with the project until we got into the SOL testing those last 3 weeks of school.  Then, once school let out, I began just plain goofing off, “messing around my house, ” and working on quilt squares for the “Rainbow Around the Block” Tennessee flood victims project with Anna Maria Horner.  Unfortunately, my little dresses got placed on the back burner until I got the idea to make some for Rednesday.  All the material has been donated to me by children from my school...all I do is sew the dresses and add the applique. These three are not made from pillowcases but rather these 2 are from donated fabric...

 

and this next one is from a dress I picked up at Goodwill, cut it apart (it was full of holes but the material was so cute), and turned it into a new dress.

These little dresses are so much fun to make, VERY easy, and I get the warm fuzzes each time I complete one.  Since each dress will be the ONLY DRESS the orphan has, I decided to make and send along a little something extra special for each child. That was when I came up with the idea of the little necklace made from Shrinky Dink plastic.

Now I am faced with something else...LDFA needs little shorts for the boys. After my children grew up, and I no longer needed to sew their clothes, I made the mistake of giving away all of my patterns. In the stores they cost an arm and a leg. but I finally lucked out. One of the custodians at my school found an old Simplicity pattern she had squirreled away so now I have a pattern for the boys.  That’s great, but I still need to come up with a little something special I can make for them like I have done with the necklaces for the girls...do any of you have a suggestion? I am stuck on that one.  Once again, HAPPY REDNESDAY....it’s a shame they only come once a week!

“He who wants to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.”

~Samuel Johnson - 1707-1784