Southeast Minnesota women sew hope for girls around the world

After Denise Smalley and her husband, Charles, retired several years ago, they moved from the Chicago area back to the small town of Chatfield, Minn., where Charles grew up.

They had visited family there for decades, so it only made sense to join the church they'd regularly attended when they came to the town in the rolling hills outside of Rochester, St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church.

The town immediately felt like home. Denise kept in touch with a close friend from her church in Chicago and for months that friend kept mentioning an organization she'd gotten involved in: Dress A Girl Around the World. The friend told Denise that the Iowa-based nonprofit made dresses for girls worldwide. Over the past decade, in fact, the organization had sewn and shipped more than a million dresses to 81 countries.

"I said, 'OK, you keep bringing it up — it must be super important,' " Denise recalled. "And I was hooked right away."

In August 2019, Denise started cutting and sewing the dresses on her own. By October, she realized it was getting expensive to do all this alone, so she asked her pastor, the Rev. Peter Haugen, and they opened it up to the church. It would be a great community project for a long Minnesota winter.

Ten women volunteered. They started bringing their sewing machines to the church to meet up weekly and sew dresses from kits that Denise assembled and placed in Ziploc bags. Haugen helped Denise secure a $250 donation from Thrivent through the not-for-profit financial services organization's Thrivent Action Teams.

Denise scoured for coupons and fabric sales at Jo-Ann Fabrics to get the most yardage for her buck.

"You get in a fabric store, and it's like a kid in a candy shop," she said. " 'Oh, look at this color!' 'This would go with that!' "

She organized it into a system. After buying the fabric, she washes and cuts the material. She places a dress' worth of fabric in a gallon baggie with bias tape, elastic thread, two 7-inch double-ply pockets and a label. Then she hands them out to volunteers to sew.

Quickly, the dresses piled up in boxes in Denise's closet. She delivered 250 or so to her friend in Chicago. Then COVID-19 hit. Many women dropped out. They couldn't meet in person anymore. But Denise and two others kept cutting and sewing. They felt called toward something bigger. The nonprofit claims that the dresses can help instill a level of confidence in the girls by showing them love, and that the labels can also act as a deterrent toward human traffickers. Those labels send a message to would-be predators that this girl is under a bigger organization's care.

There are two big boxes in Denise's closet now. They are overflowing with dresses — 236, to be exact. Denise is waiting until the pandemic is over to take those dresses to her friend in Chicago. The Chatfield group is reaching 600 dresses over the past 18 months. Recent media coverage in the area has swamped Denise with more volunteers itching to help.

Denise has long been a seamstress. A few years ago, she made Halloween costumes for her two grandsons; the older one was a scarecrow, and the baby, named Russell, was a black crow. (Get it? Russell Crowe.) She just sent a blanket to her infant granddaughter in Ohio. She likes making quilts, but they take a long time, and you can only have so many quilts. These dresses are manageable projects that usually take an hour apiece.

"You have a couple hours and nothing to do, you can go sew," she said. "It's just nice knowing that you're making some little girl feel important, that you cared enough to make something she can put on and feel pretty."

Reid Forgrave • 612-673-4647