Rose Turner Payne - Texas

We are a group of ladies that have been sewing together for more than 25 years.  We call ourselves the Texas PinPals.  We have always been passionate about supporting women, supporting the textile arts, but most especially, using the talents God gave us to help others.  We started a charity years ago sewing 18" doll clothes, buying a new doll, packing the doll and a minimum of 5 outfits with each doll and giving them to the local charity to be used in their Christmas store.  We want those young women to have something truly unique and one of a kind - bragging rights if you will - when they have so little else to brag about.   It was through this charity work that we discovered Liberty Jane patterns.  We sew all year long, making over 250 complete outfits each year.  We have several people that make the shoes, others make the purses and hats and all of us make pajamas, dresses, coats, you name it.  When we put it all together it is truly magnificent and we send those dolls off as our little ambassadors so those little girls that get them know they are loved.

While becoming familiar with Liberty Jane we, of course, ran across the Sew Powerful Purses.  We have sewn hundreds of little dresses for Africa so we were intrigued by this project and started sewing up a few.  We asked a lady from Houston to come and talk to us about the project and we adopted it as one of our projects right away.  I rewrote or clarified some of the early instructions and we hold all day sew-a-thons to make the purses.  The new pattern helped some of the less experienced sewers.  So we now take a break from our doll clothes charity sewing to work on the Sew Powerful Purse charity sewing and we just love it.  A whole new reason to collect fabric, to get together and work on something important.  One charity project led to the next.  I just love the way God works.