Baby cousin with cancer inspires girls to sew hospital gowns for sick children around the world

FREEHOLD, NJ — Battling brain cancer, little Giada Demma lay in her pediatric hospital bed, her tiny body practically swimming in a drab green hospital gown.

Her cousin Giuliana Demma remembers looking at the one-year-old girl and thinking how sad the scene was: a small child in an ugly dress, several sizes too big for her.

“I thought, ‘Why should she wear that? Why can’t she wear something nicer?’” Giuliana said.

Inspired by that moment, Giuliana Demma, 13, and her sister Audrina, 11, sewed and donated more than 1,800 brightly colored, playfully patterned dresses to hospitalized children in 36 states. They even sent them to Uganda, and three more African countries are set to receive them in the fall.

“I wanted to do something to help children like (Giada) and give them hospital gowns with pretty patterns, colorful, in which they can feel comfortable while they are going through a difficult time,” Giuliana said.

Their family hired a seamstress to make a custom Disney princess dress for little Giada, who was hospitalized in 2017 and is doing well today. But over the next four or five years, Giuliana developed an interest in sewing and remembered how desperate her little cousin felt in a drab, ill-fitting dress years earlier.

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Make happy dresses for sick children

Once Giuliana learned to sew, her cousin was no longer hospitalized. But she began making cheerful dresses for other sick children. Her first creations were dresses with flamingos and Paris-themed patterns for a child with cancer her aunt knew.

No child has to pay for one of her dresses, which are funded by donations of money and fabric. The Starbucks Foundation awarded the project a $3,000 grant this year. A hospital linen company, ImageFIRST in Clifton, New Jersey, cleans all clothes for free before they are sent to hospitals, and a group of women from a nearby housing complex and a youth group from a church helps with about 40 volunteers to cut fabric for the girls.

Giuliana gets help from her sister, who also loves to sew. Audrina helps with Giuliana’s homework and goes to the basement of their house in Freehold, New Jersey, not far from the Jersey Shore, which has been taken over by the sewing studio.

Audrina’s specialty is sewing small cushions for young patients. They are sent with boxes of markers so that the recipients can color them as they wish during their stay in the hospital.

Audrina made 100 pillows in an effort to win her Girl Scout Bronze award, packaged them and sent them to hospitals. She makes seasonally themed pillows for St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day and other special times; last winter, she made 100 snowman-shaped pillows.

They are often part of the packages that girls create that include rubber ducks and other toys. LIV Like a Unicorn, a local pediatric cancer charity, includes them in boxes it sends to children battling cancer. The Minnesota charity Children’s Surgery International brought 60 of the gowns to hospitals in Uganda in February and more will be sent to Gambia, Liberia and Ethiopia in the fall.

Some recipients send thank you notes

Some of the recipients write to thank the girls for the dresses and pillows.

“I love seeing the smile on children’s faces, even if they are going through a difficult time,” said Audrina, who wants to become a veterinarian.

The girls recently began sewing zippers onto brightly colored T-shirts to accommodate IV ports for chemotherapy or other medications that could allow young patients to not have to wear a gown at all while hospitalized.

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Samantha DiSimone’s son Vito was hospitalized in January in New York for heart valve disease when he was 9 months old. Hospital staff brought a sealed package containing a Giuliana gown made from fabric with a design from the movie “Cars.”

He smiled big as they unwrapped the garment.

“I was so emotional,” Samantha DiSimone said. “You’re in a hospital praying that your child will survive surgery, and to see him in that gown with a big smile on his face is an incredible thing.”

Soft-spoken but perfectly at ease recounting her efforts, Giuliana has the confidence and maturity of someone above her years, despite having just graduated from college. She wants to become a cancer surgeon and says she enjoys hearing from the recipients of these scrubs.

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“I’m really happy that I can help make a difference for them during this difficult time,” she said. “I want them to feel confident and know that they are an inspiration, that they are loved, that they are strong and that they are brave. They can wear these dresses and have something to lift their spirits.”

Melissa Demma, Giada’s mother, said the willingness of her child’s younger cousins ​​to make and give away dresses “amazes me and touches me every day.”

“They’re young girls and this is what they choose to do, to dedicate their time to helping others,” she said. “If everyone could be like that, our world would be a better place. It makes me feel better about the future and what this world could be.”