I work for a Bernina dealership, Hans’ Sewing, in Madison, Wisconsin. When our district representative from Bernina heard about this project, she was very excited. She and I talked about the possibility of Bernina donating some brand new machines. It was worth a try.
Our rep, Kerry, approached the President of Bernina USA, Martin Favre, with the idea. He happily embraced the project and before we knew it, 20 new Bernettes arrived at our store, ready to make the trip to New Orleans! Those Bernettes were loaded up on our January, 2007 truckload and away we went to New Orleans.
I divided the machines into two lots. Now 10 of those machines are at Lusher School in midtown, New Orleans and are set up and ready for their summer theatre costume internships and then will be used in the fall for regular classes.
The second lot is housed at O’Perry Walker High School in Orleans parish. They’ve been well-used already, sewing over 30 costumes for their Black History Month presentation. In the fall they plan to begin sewing classes.
Through Bernina’s generosity these schools now have the ability to offer sewing and have the added benefit of having a classroom full of like machines so the teachers need only learn the ins and outs of a single machine model. We are all so lucky!
A special note, on the home page of this website, the girl shown is stitching on one of the new Bernettes!
