Sewing for Good: project transforms pieces of cloth into comfort for patients in public hospitals in Belo Horizonte

Sewing for Good is one of those initiatives that warms the heart wherever it goes. Conceived by sisters Silvana, Maria de Fátima and Eliane Ferri, the name lives up to the project: everything is done out of love for the cause. Using sewing machines, meters of cloth and trims, volunteer seamstresses make personalized products to be donated to patients in public hospitals in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte, the capital city of southeastern Brazil’s Minas Gerais state.   

Last year alone, almost 6,000 items were produced, including comfort cushions, baby dolls, breast prostheses, cloth butterflies, sock balls and others. “We make everything in a room measuring 50 square meters. You can’t imagine how much stuff comes out of there! And there are two aspects to this project: donating the items and the social side of meeting the seamstresses, which is really nice,” says Silvana. 

Today, the project has around 40 volunteers. They meet twice a week to produce the garments. “The little ladies who used to stay at home alone now go there every week to sew with us. There are days when four cakes are baked at snack time… So this side is also very important, it’s not just the donation of items,” Silvana says happily. She says that even those who can’t sew can take part. “There’s no shortage of work: you can cut cloth, attach buttons, pack the items etc.”

Pieces made with love 

The pieces of cloth are the star of the project. They don’t just fulfil a practical function, they are actually a gesture of love. “The people who make the pieces are so cheerful, everything is done with so much affection, that I think that goes into the material. There’s more behind these pieces, energetically speaking,” says the project’s founder.

“I once gave a baby dummy to a boy in hospital, he’d been in for a few days and when he received it he sighed deeply and said ‘oh, good, today I won’t sleep alone’. Every child who gets a dummy, regardless of their age, grabs it and won’t let go,” she continues.

The dwarfs are given to children with cancer or who have suffered burns. The comfort pillows are given to adults undergoing hemodialysis, hysterectomy and chemotherapy. The cloth butterflies are orders made especially for a project at the Hospital das Clínicas, with mothers of perinatal birth, i.e. bereaved mothers who have lost their baby early. 

“It’s a welcoming project in which two identical butterflies are delivered: one to stay with the mother and the other to be buried with the baby. It’s like an anchor for the mother”, explains Silvana. And so new pieces are being produced. Doctors and nurses who get to know the project end up seeing an opportunity to ask for orders. The latest were pairs of cloth glasses for babies. 

“Once I arrived at the hospital, and a nurse called me over. She wanted to show me the babies who were being treated for jaundice. They were using that navy blue paper from the cotton roll as glasses, you know? And she asked me to create a specific cloth eyeglass for these babies, so we did.” 

Breast prostheses

The Costurando o Bemproject (‘Sewing for Good’) began by producing clothes for elderly people in nursing homes and, over time, started making items for hospitals. Today, in addition to comfort cushions, nannies and other treats, it also produces breast external prostheses for women who have gone through breast cancer. 

The filling is made from polypropylene balls used in the production of pet bottles. “Then you can get wet, go in the water, swim, do anything. It’s good because it dries out, it’s not made of alpiste (grain used in bird feed), which is common in cloth prostheses,” explains Silvana. With sizes from 38 to 52, the prostheses are supplied to all the SUS (SUS is one of the largest and most complex public health systems in the world, covering everything from simple care to organ transplantation, guaranteeing full, universal and free access for the entire population of Brazil) hospitals in Belo Horizonte. 

“I once went to deliver a breast prosthesis at Santa Casa and the doctor invited me into the consultation. The patient took a pile of cloth off her bust, which she was using to make volume, and ran down the corridor to find a bathroom and look at herself in the mirror. It’s always like that when we give the prostheses to the women, they go into the bathroom with one face and come out with another, asking if they can leave with the prosthesis,” she says. 

Sewing for Good

Silvana is a retired businesswoman. When she stopped working, she and her sisters decided to take patchwork classes. “It was there that the desire to do something for others arose”, she says. “When we finished the course, we already knew how to sew a bit and we asked ourselves: ‘Now what are we going to do? That’s when we decided to open Costurando Bem.” 

The sisters have been running the project for eight years. Silvana, however, is keen to point out that the project is not theirs. “We are the organizers of the project, but the project has no owner, it belongs to all of us volunteers.” 

“Once they wanted to create a box in the sewing room and I said ‘look, you can create it, but I don’t want to know who gave it, or how much they gave, nothing. So from time to time, we take this money to buy materials. But that’s not what the project is about, we need labour,” he warns.

“We have a website where we usually ask for donations of fabric or material, and there’s a bank account, but it’s something that, to tell you the truth, I don’t put much emphasis on. Of course, if it comes in it’s very welcome, but I’m not worried about it, because things happen. How, I don’t know, but they happen! Cloth yields a quantity you can’t imagine, you know?”

She recalls that everything that goes into the project is used to the maximum. “Our waste is practically zero, because when it reaches the flap, that cloth that no longer gives anything, then it becomes a sock ball. That’s why we ask for donations of socks, of lost feet, which we use to make balls that are then given to the children in the communities. They love it!” she concludes. 

Would you like to support this cause?

The Sewing for Good project accepts donations and volunteers. To find out more, visit their website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.