Seamstress, 99, Creates a One-of-a-Kind Dress Every Day for Poor Girls She Has Never Met When eight-year-old farm girl Lillian Webers mother began teaching her to sew 91 years ago, neither could have predicted how famous she would be today. The 99-year-old great-grandmother from Bettendorf, Iowa, started making a dress a day in 2011 for distribution to underprivileged girls through the Michigan-based Christian nonprofit Little Dresses for Africa. The organization has delivered 3 million dresses homemade by seamstresses from all 50 states and 30 other nations since its founding in 2008 by Rachel ONeill, the daughter of a pastor. In the past two years, Lillian has made more than 840 of those dresses for girls she has never met and wants to sew another 150 or so for a total of 1,000 by the time she turns 100 next May. After that, she intends to keep on sewing as long as possible. When I get to that thousand, if Im able to. I wont quit. Ill go at it again because theres no reason to not do nothing. I feel Im going to live forever. Im going to make a lot of dresses yet. Im not giving up, Lillian says. If Im still able to do it Ill continue all the way through, because I know Im making little girls happy, and that is very, very, very important to me. I feel like Ive just been so blessed to be able to help somebody. It helps me mentally to know Im helping these little girls. Admirer Tonya Urbatsch, who nominated the nonagenarian for WQAD-TVs Pay It Forward award, says Lillian is somebody to look up to, somebody whos not just sitting around and frittering away the end of her life. She knows that age is just a number and there is no age limit to helping others, said a WQAD-8 News anchor. It keeps me going after 99 years, the seamstress says. At my age, I dont know what I would have done if I hadnt found this to do. And I know that that help has come through God. I have to be busy, says Lillian, adding almost apologetically, I could probably make two [dresses] a day, but I only make one. Each dress takes four hours to create. Her daughters add her dresses to others made during a weekly activity by apartment complex seniors in nearby Davenport, Iowa, who are mostly 80 years of age or older. Her dresses are all really unique in their own way, with a little embroidery or a pocket or something special, said ONeill. Each dress is one-of-a-kind, because its very important to have something different for these little girls, Lillian says. I imagine four or five of them standing in a row, and they got a little dress on and theyre all different. The dresses made of pillow cases or other simple patterns are distributed, along with britches for boys and undergarments to orphanages, churches and schools in 47 African nations, as well as 34 other countries on other continents. The Little Dresses for Africa website (see link in list below) says that they are intended to place in the hearts of little girls [the sense] that they are worthy. The organizations tagline reads: Were not just sending dresses, were sending hope.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 03:55:49 +0000
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