Little Dresses for Africa and Valerie from My Own Crafty Wonderland

Hi everyone!  I have been slacking on blogging lately because I have been working long days on the most amazing project up at the community college and our first deadline is about to steamroll us...very soon our Online Writing Lab (OWL) project will be fully armed and operational!  I don't have time to post a proper blog, but I would like to give some massive super duper mad props to my girl Valerie over at My Own Crafty Wonderland!  I met this amazing little lady four or so years ago through the wonderful world of scooters and she is definitely one of the coolest chicks I know.  She is cute as a button, extra crafty, and big-hearted.

For Valerie's birthday this year, she wanted something very special.  After reading about her request--she wanted her friends to bring pillowcases and make them into dresses for little girls in Malawi via an organization called Little Dresses for Africa--I really wanted to help out.  I put out a request and TCC represented...I love that school...amazing people and I'm so lucky to be part of the team over there with terrific people like Little Ms. Librarian.

My girlfriends Fallon and Cassie joined me and between the three of us we managed about 34 pillowcases!  I brought some vintage lace and rick rack and several of those little cute fabric flower doodads in case anyone wanted to put them on their dresses as embellishment--and to my surprise almost every one of them was used! To be honest, I somewhat notoriously (in my family, at least) failed home ec in middle school...I had done all right with the orange juliuses and sugar cookies, and I still wear my simple apron to this day (it was hemming and attaching ribbons, for pete's sake), but my poor little Pentecostal Prom Princess jumper never saw the light of day, instead ending in a crumpled mess of lovely pastel fabric I'd so adoringly chosen, bemoaning to the world my quiet failure to reconcile the academic and domestic...so I wasn't sure if my flowers would be as cool to anyone else as they are to me.  Needless to say, I was happy to see that other people enjoyed them and that they looked very cute on the little dresses.  Take that, Ms. Murphy.  Stick that in your hot air balloon hat.

Uh, where was I?

Oh, here you go!  Fallon took these wonderful photos...my camera died on the first shot.  Too bad I didn't listen to hubs when he warned me not to buy discount batteries!  I couldn't find the rechargeables and I was in a hurry...but I learned my lesson!

Here I am checking out the little red one I "made"--does it count as made if someone else did the sewing?  On that note, major extra mad props to those hardcore mamas who kept up with the sewing.  Go girl power!

It's hard to tell in this pic, but that little dress was red gingham with hearts, and the little bow is white with red hearts.  It was extra rad.  On the dress directly to my right, you can see one of my little flowers.

Left to right: Fallon, Cassie, me, Valerie.  What a great group of girls!  I had such a terrific time.

Aren't these dresses just beautiful?  They will grow with their wearers and as Doug, Valerie's hubs, pointed out, if they look this cute on the line, just imagine how sweet they will be with little precious sweetie pie girlies in them!

The one on the right here is mine.  You can't tell in this photo, but it has two little pink fabric flowers on it.

What a great day!  Thank you, Valerie!