Naperville youths' sewing party helps homeless kids
Sophia Martinez's relatives always have supported her love of sewing, but when she decided she wanted to sew pajama pants to sell to her friends, her mother thought she could do one better.
"Why not donate them?" Emily Martinez of Naperville says she asked her 11-year-old daughter.
The family has donated pop for DuPage Pads shelters hosted by First Congregational Church and Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Naperville, so Martinez asked if kids sleeping there could use new PJs.
The answer was a resounding yes, especially at shelter sites with laundry machines where volunteers wash clients' clothes.
"If the kids can come in and have something clean to change into, that'd be huge," Martinez said.
Sophia was immediately on board.
"My mom always tells me we are so lucky to have a roof, food and clothing, and I just want to give kids one little thing like that," she said.
But whipping up the first pair of pants, which the Lincoln Junior High sixth-grader has taken to calling "P'Jammerz," wasn't quite so quick.
"It was very hard for me to make my first pants," Sophia said. "It probably took me three days."
Her sewing speed increased as she put together her first dozen pairs of P'Jammers and delivered them to a recent Pads shelter night at First Congregational Church. Unfortunately, there were 14 kids staying the night. Martinez said she found out as many as 35 kids use the Pads shelter when it's hosted by St. Margaret Mary Parish in Naperville, and that's the next spot where they'd like to provide fresh PJs.
"The demand is higher than an 11-year-old can produce," Martinez said.
On Tuesday, Sophia's family and consumer science teacher Lisa Gulano helped meet that demand by hosting a sewing party of 22 junior high girls. With machines whizzing and whirring, a few of Sophia's pals and a good group of eighth-graders she doesn't know sewed flannel pieces with unicorns, robots, pink poodles, monsters dribbling basketballs or monkeys on surfboards into new sleepwear.
The group planned to sew 30 pairs of pajama pants before delivering them Thursday night.
"We provide new, soft pajama pants to children at homeless shelters in our community," Sophia said as she explained the project to her helpers. "We are making kids cozy one P'Jammerz at a time."