Volunteers sew for Haitian orphans

Volunteers answered a request from former Mother Cabrini/St. Joseph?s Catholic Church parishioner, Mary Jo Sobaski Gruneich, to help in a second round of sewing for Haiti.

Earlier this summer, Mother Cabrini Parish Center in Richland became a giant sewing studio with 17 volunteers at sewing machines, cutting tables, ironing boards and a detailing center, to create shorts for orphaned boys.

?With every pair of shorts I make, I get a special feeling about some little child who has nothing and how much he will appreciate this gift,? said Isy Leppert.

The group worked from preassembled kits and sewed 51 pairs of shorts in one session. Volunteers also took home 100 kits the cutters had assembled to finish sewing.

Last summer the group, which has grown by at least seven people this summer, made a total of 200 dresses that were taken directly to orphans in Haiti.

The request came a year ago when a former parish member wintered in Arizona where a group of sewers had begun the project. A member of Arizona?s group has two family members who travel to Haiti and deliver the clothes while working four months in Haiti each year.

The sewing project is an extension of the nationally publicized effort to give clothes and textile items to orphans in Africa and Haiti. Children receiving these donations have nothing but their clothes.

The Mother Cabrini/St. Joseph?s group brought in their own donated supplies including fabric, elastic and thread to create more kits along with T-shirts to go with the shorts. Sobaski Gruneich collected supplies from her neighborhood in Bettendorf.