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Clothing Project: University of Minnesota and Blue House Partnership |
Top: 2017 - Secondary students model new dresses. Above: custom labels from U of M.
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 2012 - Sundress
Learning happens on both sides of the globe
Since 2012, University of Minnesota students have been an inspiration to the Blue House girls. That year, Sherri Gahring, U of M apparel design professor, offered to have her beginning sewing students make sundresses for the Blue House girls, as a one-day service-learning project. That small beginning grew when Lucy Dunne, Director of the Apparel Design Program, expanded the effort into a semester-long project for upper-level students that had students developing and producing shoulder bags, play pants and rain ponchos for the girls. Lucy Dunne’s third year apparel design class focuses on the mass-manufacturing process for clothing and sewn products. |
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Ever since, students have designed and manufactured outfits and accessories for the Blue House each fall semester. Dunne's students see a presentation about the girls, ask questions about their life in Uganda, and then design and mass produce functional clothing specifically for their needs. In 2018, the class asked the Blue House girls to draw designs they’d like to see produced. The students make between 100 and 200 garments each year that are carried to the Blue House by volunteers. For most of these girls, their U of M outfits were the first new clothes they’d ever had. The University students love having such special customers!
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2018 - Olivia, one of the Blue House girls, submitted a sketch of these pants outfits that university students developed, and the girls are modeling.
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