Sewing With Nancy

A minimal amount of sewing time can make a huge impact in another person's life. Today's Nancy's Corner guest is here to share why and how she developed Pretty Pockets. Please welcome Maryanne Arthur who joins us via Skype, from Maryland. Good to see you, Maryanne. Good to see you, Nancy. Thank you very much for the invitation to share our story of Pretty Pockets. You're welcome. You have an interesting story. It didn't start out with the best circumstances until-- Explain to our viewers your experience and then how you developed Pretty Pockets. Sure, thank you very much. In March of 2011, I had breast cancer surgery. When I came out of surgery I was flanked by four drain tubes and bulbs two on each side of my body. I do have a sample of a drain tube that I'd like to show you. About six inches of the tube goes into your body and the rest of the tube and the bulbs dangle at your side, and hang down past your waist. As you can imagine, these were heavy when they filled with fluid and they're very painful against raw skin. So my ingenious partner Ann Marie ripped apart a pair of our daughter's pajamas and covered the bulbs with each leg of the pajamas. So, from there, I wore the drain bulb covers for the duration of my recovery. A few days after my surgery I went into my doctor's office for a checkup at the University of Maryland St. Joseph's Medical Center and another patient was in the waiting room. She had the exact same drain bulbs. But she had taken all four of her drain bulbs and put them together in a brown paper bag and stapled that bag to her waistband. So, I came right home that day and actually cut out and designed the pocket as a hip, soft, wonderful way to corral drain bulbs. The hitch is, I'm actually not a sewer! So I recruited Ann Marie to sew two pockets for me. She put them together and we delivered them the very next day to Miss Joan at the hospital. She loved them. The folks at the hospital loved them and we began production at home. You don't make a penny from Pretty Pockets. You donate all of your time and energies in spreading the word of these pretty pockets. They're made of nice flannel. They're soft. You just pin them into place. Yes, that's correct. When we were talking about this earlier you were mentioning that since 2011 you've had a lot of contacts. Tell our viewers, it's kind of monumental today as far as this outreach today that happens. It is phenomenal. I cannot tell you how wonderful this story has become from the very beginning in my home to over 500 people who have contacted me in the last four months to receive a copy of the pattern. There were so many integral people who stitched the story of the pockets along the way. I'd love to be able to highlight a few of them if that'd be okay. Sure, of course. Well, beginning at home my partner Ann Marie came up with the idea of actually covering the bulbs. Then her mother Judy is a very avid sewer and quilter. She, for the last two years, has cut, sewn, and produced hundreds and hundreds of pockets that we've distributed. She made a contact for me at the Jo-Ann Fabric store locally with Regina, the sewing manager there. Regina has hosted several sew-ins over the course of the last two years. The sew ins were picked up by a media newsletter here at home, called The Patch. From The Patch in Baltimore a woman in Florida read the article online. Her name is Rob Newton and she runs an online embroidery newsletter for a company called Designs by Sick. She contacted me personally by phone and asked if she could rerun my story and promote Pretty Pockets as a giving project to her 30,000 people on her newsletter list. Wow. It's amazing. Five hundred of those people have contacted me personally. One of them, named Debbie Wright, referred me to you. Well, it's like connecting the dots I'm glad you can give it to other people as well. Not only are Pretty Pockets used by breast cancer survivors but other people with all kinds of surgeries. Yes, that is very true. I was promoting it and even my gift tag says it's a free gift for breast cancer patients. But the more people who contacted me they were asking me if they could modify the pattern for other types of surgery. Some of the drain bulbs are different sizes so folks have taken the pattern and designed whatever they needed to accommodate friends and family members in need. They can just be pinned to your clothes. They don't need to be stapled or placed into a paper bag. You can make them in fun colors, and you put a fun message with them, too. I do, my message on my tag reads "A discreet and spirited way to secure post-surgical drains." It's a charming story, I thank you. I'd like to report to our audience that your surgery was in 2011, and now you're cancer free. I am cancer free, yes, thankfully. That's great news. Maryanne, this was charming. We'll direct our viewers to our website at nancyzieman.com where they can click on Nancy's Corner and view your introduction and go to your website. It's a free pattern, right? It is a free pattern. I saved it in a pdf format, so people can download it. I even saved a template so all you have to do is cut the template out and trace the fabric over the top of that. It's very easy to do. And feel free to modify the pattern according to your own needs. Share it with your friends, don't keep it a secret. Please remember this project in the future because there's such a need for it with so many people having surgery. It's not just for one time a year. Keep all those fabric scraps and create Pretty Pockets. Thank you, Maryanne. Thank you for watching at home. Bye for now.