Sewing With Nancy

One of my goals for the Nancy's Corner segment is to introduce you to volunteer programs. Today's organization has a very compelling mission to provide custom-made adaptive clothing to all wounded servicemembers. Here to explain how you can become involved with "Sew Much Comfort" please welcome Michele Cuppy, who joins us via Skype. Welcome to Sewing with Nancy, &nbspMichele. Thanks, Nancy, thanks for having me. When I read about your service organization Sew Much Comfort I knew Sewing with Nancy viewers would come to your aid. Why don't you give our viewers a review of how Sew Much Comfort began. Well, we started in November 2004 and basically a gal came to us and said she saw a serviceman receive this Purple Heart at Walter Reed in his hospital gown, because he had a fixator on his leg which is a 36" round halo. Normal clothing doesn't fit that. So I sewed him a piece of clothing a pair of "fixator pants." He had not worn pants in six months and he was elated and in tears. So we decided to get ten ladies together here in Burnsville, Minnesota, and provide 100 pieces of fixator pants between now and the springtime and hope to make a little bit of a difference. We got contacted from Sew News magazine to be featured in their March 2005 magazine. So we were. We had no idea is that we would have an outpouring of 500 volunteers from across the United States that wanted to help us out. So, we kind of became an organization and decided to make this work and make a difference for these servicemembers so they have some comfort and dignity. Our viewers can now see the photos of the long pants so that they can wrap around the fixator. There are also two other variations that you make. We make just the regular lounge pants and we make the dress pants. We also make boxers, t-shirts and long-sleeve t-shirts. Basically, any normal clothing that we have in our closets we provide for all of our servicemembers. It's unfortunate that we have to provide these. Unfortunate, but what a need you are filling. Share with our viewers the number of adaptive clothing that your organization and your members have created. Through our volunteer seamstresses we've been able to provide a 122,000 pieces of adaptive clothing since we began. This basically gets our servicemembers out of the hospital gown and out into the public. We've talked to servicemembers. We had a gentleman who had a fixator and he was just laying in his bed. He got a pair of our pants and got himself in his wheelchair and started going around and visiting people. It makes a difference. Those of us who sew and quilt can help. It's all on your website. Correct. If you go in our website under "volunteer" there's a link that says "request a packet." Once you do that, we send out the packet of all the clothing that we provide. You decide what it is that you want to start with to sew. Then we send a quality piece of garment out that you send back in and get approved. We just want to make sure that all of our sewers are sewing the same throughout. The hospitals are expecting top quality and that's what we want to give them. Your instructions are great. As a person who writes sewing instructions I'm impressed with them. You'll have to work with hook and loop tape or Velcro and some bias tape. So you need a little sewing skill. That's correct. We have to thank Stephanie for our new, updated instructions. We were cutting and pasting and it was pretty crude that first three years. They're great now. I know that everyone will be able to follow these with ease. This is a very important program. Do you know how many people now volunteer or have volunteered for you? Well, obviously people retire along the way but right now, we have over 800 active seamstresses. The only thing we require of them is if we send them the garments that we get it back within 30 to 45 days. Sure. We have our distribution facility in Boulder, Colorado. We keep the bins full so that when we get the hospital orders we're able to ship out what we need. We know that Sewing with Nancy viewers will help you. Thank you so much for being with us and for telling us about Sew Much Comfort. Thank you for having me. Thanks for watching this program of Sewing with Nancy on "Serger Boutique." Next time, we'll be back with our second program again, with Barbara Goldkorn. If you'd like to learn more about Sew Much Comfort and this program, you can watch it again on NancyZieman.com online. Everything relating to Sewing with Nancy is there with information about the Nancy's Corner guests. You'll find the website address for Sew Much Comfort, as well. Thank you for watching on Public Television as well as online. See you next time. Bye for now.