In 2012, mother/daughter team and current Briarwood residents Jeanne Gaumond and Jan Slaughter went to a quilt show and came back with an idea – little girls’ dresses made from pillowcases! Jan made a prototype and showed it to family; one other sister, Diana, was on board. As a group of two sisters and a mom, we gathered one weekend and sewed 60 dresses! Now where to donate them… Diana learned of a charity in the Philippines and sent them off. That was how we learned the hard way that shipping is expensive and that proper delivery in a poor country is far from guaranteed.
In 2013 Jeanne and Jan thought the sewing people at Briarwood would like to see this project. We set up for a one-time demonstration and lesson, but the women loved it so much they wanted us to run a workshop every week! We settled on a monthly workshop and since then, except for COVID lockdown, we have met on the second Thursday of each month.
Meanwhile, the family gathered for another weekend, joined by Jan’s sons, and sewed 120 dresses! We were on a roll! Then the 60 that were lost were somehow returned. The sisters scoured local newspapers for stories about local groups going to poor countries. Some dresses were sent with a church group to Haiti and some went to Costa Rica with a teacher on a mission trip. This was much better! We gathered again for a weekend and sewed 360 dresses, with Jan’s husband Ken helping put in the ribbons and Diana’s husband John bringing us tea and lunch – and keeping the oldies radio station tuned in. Jan was then contacted by a Briarwood neighbor whose daughter helped run a mission in Haiti and they wanted as many dresses as we could give them. So the family gathered again and sewed 410 dresses in one weekend. By word of mouth we found other donor partners – a neighbor’s cousin lived next door to a dentist who was going to Africa on a medical mission. A friend’s co-worker was filling a shipping barrel twice a year to send home to Sierra Leone. A neighbor met a man at church who was going to Puerto Rico after the hurricane and would take a suitcase full. A church group in Sterling would take as many as we can give them for their Dominican Republic mission trips. During this time the sewing group at Briarwood, The Old Sew and Sews (and Ken), was meeting monthly and sewing 20-30 dresses per month. As of early 2024 the Pillowcase Dress Project has donated over 2200 dresses to 12 countries, and we keep on sewing!”
