100-year-old woman sews more than 100 tiny dresses for children in need

Most mornings, 100-year-old Eva Bossenberger gets up before the chickens do and sits down at her 72-year-old sewing machine.

She spends hours a day sewing together bits of fabric to make dresses for children in countries where dresses might not come so easily.

Her hands struggle to thread the almost-microscopic eye of a needle. Her eyes struggle with the same. Sometimes the task can take a while, but that needle will get threaded, and that dress will get made — because her pastor asked her to.

“My pastor asked me in December if I would make 180 dresses for little girls for shoebox gifts,” Bossenberger said.

The gifts are a part of Operation Christmas Child, a Samaritan’s Purse program that sends gifts to children in need all over the world.

Bossenberger accepted the challenge. Since Dec. 11, she’s sewn 114 dresses.

“I was real happy when I got to a hundred,” she said.

When WBTV visited her on Monday, it was clear that time is of the essence. She still has more dresses to make, and just a few months before Christmas time.

“I’m real thrilled to know these little girls are wearing my dresses from North Carolina,” Bossenberger said.

The pictures tell the story of little girls who might be the only people more thrilled than her to be wearing dresses made with love.

This story was originally published October 3, 2017 at 9:52 AM with the headline "100-year-old woman sews more than 100 tiny dresses for children in need."