A golf course is no doubt a big draw for plenty of people shopping for a retirement community. But for quite a few women at Pelican Preserve in south Fort Myers, the sewing room was the clincher.
“You can golf anywhere. There aren’t sewing rooms everywhere,” claimed Maureen Shaffer, one of the Sewing Pelicans, a group of about 30 women who have made and donated items from teddy bears to dog begs to surgical caps and quilts. To date, they’ve given more than 2,400 items to children having outpatient surgery, adults in hospice care, veterans, girls at the PACE Center and many others.
Several groups, including the Sewing Pelicans, gather once or twice a week to stitch, quilt and share their skills for other groups, too, including children in Africa and the Dominican Republic and older girls worldwide.
Joyce Marcotte heads another group of about 20 women who supply the effort Little Dresses for Africa, which outfits young girls with new frocks. Doing so gives them greater self-esteem and even keeps them from being trafficked, Marcotte said.
She pointed to some framed photos on the wall of the sewing room of young girls — photos that they received through a contact in country. “We happened to find a couple of pictures of our dresses in Africa,” she said. “I'm getting chills just thinking about it. That dress came out of this room.” Her group has made over 1,000 outfits and counting.
The group also collects Beanie Babies and puts them in the dress pockets for the little girls and makes zipper purses for the pockets of dresses for older girls.
Sewing 4 Valor is a group of 27 women who make red, white and blue quilts for veterans in hospice care. Many families keep them as remembrances of their loved ones who were in the service.
Yet another group makes sanitary products for girls who are on their menstrual cycles in less developed countries. The simple flannel products keep them able to go to school during this time when previously they had to stay home. “And that's the reason why this project started, so that these girls can be educated,” said Karen Billman, a group member.
Many other women at Pelican Preserve sew in their own homes and donate items to ready them for packing parties and shipment around the world, Marcotte said.
Some of the bank of sewing machines in the sewing room were donated and some bought by Pelican Preserve, the women said. Same goes for the fabrics. While plenty are donated, they spend their own money on red, white and blue fabric, flannels, quilt batting and spray adhesive.
Some women who don’t sew join the groups because they want to give back. In those cases, “We find jobs for them, and sometimes we turn them into quilters,” Shaffer said.
There are some “very committed women that we have in our group. I'm glad to be a part of that,” Billman said.
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