Sew generous: 99-year-old woman makes a dress a day
Meet Lillian Weber, the 99-year-old woman who creates and sews a new dress every day for a girl she will never meet.
Weber gets to work on a new dress every morning at her home in the small town of Bettendorf, Iowa, to benefit Little Dresses for Africa, a Christian nonprofit agency that sends dresses overseas to impoverished girls in Africa.
Weber first began her project in 2011 and has since made over 800 unique and one of a kind dresses. She is slowly reaching her goal of sewing 1,000 dresses by the time she turns 100.
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Even though Weber is fast at her craft, she always takes the time to make each dress extra special, personalizing each design with a pattern, appliqué or stitching detail. All in an effort to ensure that each girl that receives a dress feels beautiful.
And even though she is almost 100, Webber has no desire to stop or slowdown.
“It is just what I like to do,” Weber said in a interview with Quad-City Times.
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“If I’m still able to do it I’ll continue all the way through. Because I know I’m making little girls happy. And that is very important to me,” Weber told NBC News.
After teaming up with Little Dresses for Africa, Weber has become their "Sewing Celebrity” and the organization has even created a Lillian shipping fund to help get dresses to the children.
The website states that 100% of the donations in the Lillian Weber Fund will go to shipping the dresses directly to Africa.
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Little Dresses for Africa, founded in 2008, has received more than 2.5 million dresses from all 50 states, as well as the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Mexico and Australia, according to the Michigan-based organization's website.
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