Fritzy

nursie76 go to Nancy's Notions.com & scroll to the bottom of the page & click on the "creative kindness site" & the infor & pattern instructions will come up. It also has a few other items that can be made for cancer patients, walkers, etc.

zz-pd

thank you for the information. God bless. Penny

CarrieAnne

Those little dresses are SO cute!

flikkem

This is a great project. Our church participated in a similar project for girls (dresses) and boys (shorts) from Haiti. They told us to machine stitch everything because they had such primitive laundry conditions (rivers). It was fun to sew for kids again.

nursie76

Fritzy, Got it, thanks a bunch!

Mary Jane, I agree it sounds like a great project and I can hardly wait to sew for kids again too.

Question, can you put little touches like simple embroidery or applique on the dresses, something that would hold up to the river?

Holice

If you type in a search for "little dresses for Africa" the site will come up. there are a couple sites that give you instructions or One of the pattern companies (simplicity I believe) has a pattern.
You can also search Pillow Case Dresses. They originally were made out of pillow cases.
We had a work day at a local quilt shop and got 76 dresses in various stages of completion and 45 boy's shorts. I talked to the organizer of the Little Dresses and she said they get very few shorts.
It took me about 30 min to make the first dress and about the same time for the shorts. The dresses are all made the same way. the size is determined by the length so fabric as little as 18"xwidth of fabric works.

nursie76

What pattern did you use for the little boys shorts. I would like to make some of them too. Did you use just cotton material for both of these items? I know that some pillowcases are blends.

flikkem

Yes. They encouraged us to embellish them in any way we could dream up. Some of the ladies who do machine embroidery were able to use this feature on their machines. I did some simple applique on some, used rick rack and other trim on some. Most of us have bits and pieces of trim that work well on these dresses. I also used my decorative stitches along the hemline.

flikkem

A pattern was provided for us from the church - very simple elastic waist shorts - machine hemmed. They used heavy cotton for most of them. I believe the fabric was donated by church members from their stashes. Instead of finishing off the elastic, we were asked to just put a safety pin at the ends of the elastic and leave it exposed to they could adjust it to size for the child receiving it. They also suggested we zig zag or serge all the seams in these.

nursie76

Mary Jane,

Thanks for the info. I have an embroidery machine so that will be fun. Have decorative stitches also. :)

I will look for a simple little boys shorts pattern. What size ranges?