Anything handmade for personal reconnection

In today's technology where everything seems to be communicated electronically, we are losing a personal connection that is so important to the human spirit. When you make something handmade for that someone special in your family and/or a friend you reconnect because you give that person your time, skill, care and love.  

Show how much you care not only with your family and friends by donating a pillowcase or a piece of fabric or a pillowcases dress to the 'Share the Love' this Valentines Day Charity Drive by Dress A Girl Australia and share that love and care you have in your heart also to the less fortunate children in this world this Valentines Day. Thanks!


For donations, please post them to -
Dress A Girl Australia
P.O. Box 240
Casula NSW 2170
Australia


Please keep those pillowcases and/or fabrics and/or pillowcase dresses coming. For more information about this campaign, please send email to dressagirlaustrali@gmail.com.

Featured in 'Threading My Way'

WooHoo! The pillowcase dress I made for another niece of mine last Christmas has been featured in Threading my Way's Threading your way - Dresses for Girls Link Party. 

Never in my life did I imagine that I would be making dresses although I love handmades. I do a lot of quilting (mostly small ones) and landscape wallhangings. Sewing a dress was the farthest thing in my mind until I started Dress A Girl Around the World - Dress A Girl Sydney & Australia in April 2011. I had to learn how to make a pillowcase dress. Lucky me it was only for a pillowcase dress to dress the less fortunate girls around the world. But lately I have been getting bolder in my sewing projects and soon I may make my own party skirt to wear to another niece of mine who is celebrating her 21st birthday in March but this would all depend on whether I have the time or not. But we will never know.

Here is the dress I made that was featured. It seems like a dwarf when it is displayed side by side with the other really good dresses sewn by the other crafters....but I made it with my own hands and am proud of it and my niece is walking tall wearing it. :-)

Thank you so much to Pam of Threading my Way for featuring my dress.

How to Make the "Best Dress Ever" - A Tutorial from Dress A Girl Around the World - VA

There is a tutorial on how to make the best dress ever by Dress A Girl Around the World representative Karen Mills-Thomas from Virginia. The tutorial includes step-by-step instructions on how to make a standard pillowcase dress with ties on the shoulders. It also includes images showing how some steps can be done and size measurements vs lengths of the dress.

Here is the link to the tutorial - click on the link below or copy and paste to your internet browser if the link does not work -


http://dressagirlaroundtheworld-va.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-make-best-dress-ever-tutorial.html?spref=bl

The instructions also is asking for you to print the armhole templates from the Dress A Girl Around the World website. I have made the template available below and all you have to do is print the different templates for different sizes of dresses you intend to make. 


To print the template, do a right-click on your mouse, locate 'save image as' and save the template on your local drive. Once it is saved, you can then do a right-click on your mouse again and locate 'print' to print the file.

Link to the tutorial and the armhole templates are also available on the left navigation pane of this site under 'Dress A Girl Best Dress Ever'  How-to. You have the choice to check out the step-by-step instructions or the armhole patterns.

If you have any questions regarding this tutorial, please send an email to dressagirlaustralia@gmail.com and I will try my best to help you.

Have Fun!

Ready-to-sew Kits for Vocational workshops

My niece who is on a year-long volunteer assignment in the Philippines sponsored by the Aus Red Cross reposted and shared my 'Share the Love' this Valentines Day Charity Drive among her 430+ facebook friends hoping that the drive would be able to collect lots of pillowcases and fabrics. She asked if I could send ready-to-sew kits for an ayad friend who is working with an agency that deals with girls who have been rescued from trafficking and the sex industry. They will use the ready to sew kits to run vocational sewing workshops with the older girls who usually can't get into college after high school so they develop a skill. 

Yes, dress kits on their way!

If you are wondering what an 'ayad' is ayad is an acronym for Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development. It provides skilled young Australians the opportunity to volunteer overseas in Asia, the Pacific and Africa.

If you want to help me make more kits for vocational sewing workshops to help the less fortunate earn a living, please donate fabrics and/or pillowcases to Dress A Girl Australia.

For more information about this campaign, please send email to dressagirlaustralia@gmail.com.

Love and Dress A Girl Australia

Love is beautiful. Love is a pillowcase dress for the less fortunate girls around the world. Love does conquers all.

Feel the love....Give love....Share the love with the less fortunate girls around the world with a pillowcase dress on Valentines Day!

Please donate to Dress A Girl Australia's first charity drive for the year. 'Share the Love' this Valentine's Day.

Please post donations to -

              Dress A Girl Australia

              P.O. Box 240

              Casula NSW 2170

              Australia

Thank you in advance!

"Share the Love" this Valentines Day Charity Drive

Dress A Girl Australia is holding a "Share the Love" this Valentines Day Charity Drive starting tomorrow, Jan 19 until Feb 17, 2011. 


Dress A Girl Australia is calling for Red Pillowcase
dresses or Red Pillowcases or Red Fabric donations to make into red pillowcase dresses. 

Give love...share the love and make a red difference to the lives of the less fortunate children around the world this Valentines Day. Make your Valentines Day this year different by imagining a world where every little girl owned at least one dress.

 

Please send any dress, pillowcase and/or fabric donations to :
Dress A Girl Australia
P.O. Box 240
Casula NSW 2170

Looking forward to receiving something red in my postbox for the next 30 days. Thanks HEAPS and Happy Valentines Day!

For any questions or if you need more information, please send email to dressagirlaustralia@gmail.com.

Dress Measurements for Fabrics

Here is a good guide on measurements especially for some of you who are sewing dresses or pillowcase dresses out of fabrics. The measurements are good for sizes from 6 mos to size 10. Good sizes we would love to see the girls grow up on the dresses especially if it is the only dress they will possibly own and be wearing for many years to come.

If you have any questions, please feel free to write to dressagirlaustralia@gmail.com

Dress A Girl Australia Numbers for 2011

It is time to close off the numbers achieved in 2011 and focused on the new year 2012.

To summarize, in 2011, from April to Dec, I was able to collect 459 dresses which included 337 dresses raised from the Christmas Drive, 28 pairs of shorts for the boys, 124 ready-to-sew kits and also received 66 pillowcases.

Of this collection, 122 dresses were distributed to 122 girls around the world 119 of which were mainly in the Philippines who deserved to own at least one dress and 3 pairs of shorts. Pillowcases and bundles of fabrics were donated to Dress A Girl Around the World – Dress A Girl Philippines. 

On hand , I have 275 dresses ready for distribution this first quarter of 2012, 25 pairs of shorts for the boys, 60 pillowcases and 114 ready-to-sew kits.

I also have on-hand bundles of fabrics received during the year especially during the Christmas Drive period which I believe will make between 60-75 dresses more, bias tapes, ribbons, buttons, elastics and laces great for embellishments.

This first quarter of 2012, my focus would be on distributing these great collections as planned. Not included in the 275 on-hand count, 12 dresses and 10 ready-to-sew kits are in the process of distribution. 50 dresses have been sorted, labelled, packed and ready for dispatch for the schoolchildren of the United Future Foundation in Uganda. 

Updates and notifications will be provided on this site once feedback is available from these distributions. 

Woohoo!! What a great year Dress A Girl Australia had. It seems so much has been achieved in such a short period of time.

None of these numbers, these great collections would have been possible without your support and believing on this campaign. My heartfelt thanks to all who made the dresses, to all who contributed in the making of the dresses. To reiterate, every fabric, pillowcase, button, spool of thread, lace, elastic and most especially your time and effort spent on the making of these dresses are very much appreciated. Thank you for joining me on this journey of making a difference in this world in 2011 and I hope the word would be spread around for a better 2012. Thank you.

Donation Acknowledgements FY2012 #5 - 13 Fabric Kits & 2 Pillowcase Kits

From the members of the Cenacle, Servants of the Lord and Espiritu Santo Parochial School under the coordination of Erlyn Ballesta Sanchez, Dress A Girl Australia received 13 Fabric Kits and 2 Pillowcase Dress Kits. Each kit included bias tapes, ribbons, buttons and a lace for one of the pillowcase kit.

This is the second contribution of the group. First contribution of 25 kits were received in late Nov 2011. 10 of those kits have been sent to the Philippines c/o Lilia Tapia on the 7th of Dec 2011 and today I got an email confirmation from Lilia that last January 9, 2012, she has received the parcel containing 10kits. When things are a little bit back to normal and hopefully in the very near future, we will get some pictures of the dresses she will be making out of those 10 kits and 10 girls wearing her creations. Lilia comes from Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines which was hit by Typhoon Sendong (International Code Washi) which claimed the lives of more than a thousand.

To Erlyn and the members of the Cenacle, Servants of the Lord and Espiritu Santo Parochial School, thank you for your unwavering support of Dress A Girl Australia's campaign to dress the less fortunate girls around the world. I hope to see all kits you have contributed made into dresses for children to wear in the very near future. Thank you.

Donation Acknowledgement FY2012 #4 - Dresses & Shorts from Deidre Parker

From South Australia, Deidre has sent me again another parcel of 11 dresses and 2 pairs of shorts. Woohoo!!

In case you missed out earlier articles in my blog, Deidre is one of the earliest supporters of Dress A Girl Australia. Her first donation was for 11 dresses which was then included in the first dress distribution last year. When she read my article on dress distribution dated 30-Sep-2011, she wrote to me saying that she was delighted to see from the photos in the article that a tiny yellow dress she made from a scrap of fabric and lace has found a happy owner. This is the picture of the little girl who now owns the tiny yellow dress -

To Deidre, thank you so much for your consistent support of dressing the less fortunate children around the world. It is people like you who makes this campaign really happen and I thank you for your help.

If you want to help provide dresses to children around the world, please send email to dressagirlaustralia@gmail.com for more information.

The power of Craft

What is not to like about crafting....especially when it makes a difference to the lives of the less fortunate children of our beloved 'earth'. 

Ahh...the power of craft!

Donation Acknowledgement FY2012 #3 - Dozen Pillowcases

These dozen pillowcases were donated by one of my BFFs (cool acronym for best friends forever) who lives in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. I wanted to donate a couple of packs of undies to Dress A Girl around the World - West Texas for the children in Nicaragua but I could not purchase any pack online from Walmart because they would not accept cards issued outside of the USA nor payment via paypal. 

So I contacted Flordeliza and ask her if she could purchase the packs on my behalf and I will just send her the payment via postal mail. Instead of me sending her the payment she asked that I buy fabrics for her and make them into dresses and these dresses will be her contribution to Dress A Girl Australia. I did not buy her fabrics instead I bought 6 packs of 2 pillowcases per pack since it was on sale in one of the shops close to where I live. 

Here are the pillowcases that I bought. They are all in plain colours but I can always add some printed matching fabrics and laces to make the dresses more lively.

To Flor, thank you for such a wonderful swap. Now I just need to find the time to make 12 dresses for you. :-)

Donation Acknowledgements FY2012 #2 - Fabrics from em&femme designs

Good Day Everyone!  It is time for donation acknowledgements once again. These bundles of donated fabrics were sent to Katherine Nott who will sew them into dresses for Dress A Girl Australia.

 From em&femme Designs.

https://www.facebook.com/emandfemmedesigns

To em&femme Designs, thank you so much for the bundles of fabrics and the bias tapes. Thank you for making this world a better place for the less fortunate girls around the world.

To Katherine, a big, big thank you for the wonderful help and support you are providing to Dress A Girl Australia. It is very much appreciated.

Also I'd like to post better images of the complete bundles of fabrics donated by Incy Wincy Bows with a contribution from Tash-ly Creations which Katherine received. Again, thank you so much for believing in this campaign.

For those who are inspired with all these donations to be made into dresses for Dress A Girl - Sydney and Australia, if you have any fabrics that you no longer need and want to contribute to this campaign, please send email for posting details to dressagirlaustralia@gmail.com. 

A special note inside pockets

Yesterday was a full day. In the morning I went to mail and pick up a couple of parcels from the postoffice and was on my way to purchase printer ink cartridges (which I have run out of) when I realized that I was supposed to enquire from the counter if I still had by any chance a parcel with them but did not have the card left by their delivery people so I went back. I remembered I bought a few items (for myself this time) early Dec and have not received yet but was advised on the email that it has been sent. As usual, needed to prove who I was and it did turn out that they had the parcel since the 19th of Dec and I never got notified. To think that I go to pick up parcels almost every Saturday! What can I do...at least I had my parcel. 

The rest of the day I spent sorting dresses by sizes, attached labels and folded them up. In the beginning I would count everytime I finished putting a Dress A Girl(Hope 4 Women logo) label but every now and then I would lose track of the last number I just did so I decided to stop counting. 

I should have mentioned this in one of my late Dec 2011 acknowledgments when I first found them inside the pockets of 5 dresses I labelled earlier for early distribution as it is very worth mentioning.  Tucked inside the pockets of a total of 18 dresses were folded notes and guess what was printed on each note? Printed was a picture of the students of Bridgetown High School from Western Australia with a message "With Love from Bridgetown High School Western Australia".

Note inside pockets of 18 dresses made by the students of Bridgetown High
School under the guidance of  Victoria Meyer who is a member of 'The Sewing
Library Group.

Such a very thoughtful gesture from these students who are making a difference in this world one dress at a time. Thank you so much for the lovely notes. I am sure whoever receives the dresses you made will treasure those notes. And I also will make sure that whoever is going to distribute those dresses on my behalf will be advised of the notes inside the pockets and to make sure that recipients of those dresses are shown those notes.

I hope what these kids from Bridgetown High did will inspire and motivate other people to make a difference and help children from the less fortunate locations around the world to own at least one dress and that dress is made by you.

For anyone who wants to make a dress for Dress A Girl Around the World - Dress A Girl Sydney & Australia, if you feel like including a note (or a light, small doll or anything light a little girl would treasure) on the dresses that you make, please feel free to do so.

For more information on this Dress A Girl Around the World campaign, please send email to dressagirlaustralia@gmail.com.

Sewing Event in Sydney?

I have been looking around for halls or spaces for rent in Sydney and even outside the Sydney area for at least half a day so I can hold a sewing event but the hourly rates are quite expensive more so if you hold the event on a weekend or on a public holiday. Holding sewing events on a weekday is out of the question as I work full-time. To make the renting worthwhile I reckon   an event should have at least a minimum number of 50 attendees to be able to make at least between 100-150 dresses. The other alternative would be to hold sewing marathons or sew-alongs and anyone can join in from home.

Hmmmm....maybe I should come up with a survey first and see if I can get a good feedback on the number of people who would like to join in a sewing event here in Sydney and take it from there. I was thinking of a sewing event sometime in June or at least before 2012 ends and I believe this would require a lot of planning and organizing. 

If there is anyone out there who live in the Sydney area who would be interested to join or help in making dresses for girls around the world for at least 4 hours one Saturday, please send an email to dressagirlaustralia@gmail.com. I would love to see you join and have fun making dresses.

More fabric bundles for Dress A Girl Australia

Last week my sister and I went to Lincraft to purchase some cotton knits for her crochet project and my t-shirt project. Since I started sewing pillowcase dresses, I have become more daring in my sewing projects. I plan to make myself a t-shirt. :-)

Since the materials were on sale at $5.56 a metre and had a width of 150cms instead of buying only a metre for my tshirt, I ended up buying 3 metres of the blue cotton knit. A metre for my t-shirt(in case I make a mistake at least I have some spare) and 2mts to make into pairs of shorts for Dress A Girl Australia's 'shorts for the boys' campaign which am officially launching in March.

Last Monday, we decided to go to Spotlight to see if they had cotton knits of the same quality we bought at Lincraft but they only had two color choices and didnt really convince us to buy as I think they were more expensive. We were about to leave when I noticed a sign that says a dollar per metre. I had a look at the fabrics and it had a width of 150cms. For $6.00 (yes $6.00 I paid at the counter) I was able to buy a  total of 7.5 metres of the red and black squares and polka dots which I considered shorts-quality kind of fabrics. And I think they will also make good pillowcase dresses.

So here is another haul of fabrics ready to make into pairs of shorts this time for Dress A Girl Australia.

Donation Acknowledgements for the year 2012 #1 - Fabrics from Incy Wincy Destash

What a good way to start the year 2012 with these bundles of fabrics from Incy Wincy Destash with a donation from Tashly Creations too. These fabrics will be sent to Katherine who has committed to making pillowcase dresses out of these fabrics.

To Simone and Natasha, thank you so much for the goodies. Every fabric donated from these bundles is very much appreciated. Every dress created by Katherine from these bundles will make a difference to the lives of the girls around the world who will own any of these dresses. Thank you.

New Year's resolutions for 2012

So what is it going to be for 2012? Would it be 'work smarter' and get less stressed at work? Or if you love handcraft work find a way to finish up all projects, reduce stash or acquire more stash? Or would you like to do more work for charity? Would it be a lifestyle change? Weight loss or walk 10,000 steps a day?

Whatever it is that you have decided or still has to decide on what to do in 2012, I hope you will enjoy and have fun achieving them  and get yourself rewarded with the biggest tick marks on the list at the end of the year. Remember resolutions you list down on a piece of paper or write in a journal are not wishes but goals you set to achieve. 

Dress A Girl Australia will be striving for more dresses and also have lots of exciting plans in store for 2012 so if you are looking for ways to be able to help especially the less fortunate children around the world, then come and join Dress A Girl Around the World - Dress A Girl Australia in its journey to make a difference in a small but surely way. Share whatever craft skills you've got to help and make this world a better place.

For more information about Dress A Girl Around the World - Dress A Girl Australia, please send email to dressagirlaustralia@gmail.com.