A sweet 11-year-old from Massachusetts is doing her part to help dogs and cats find forever homes.
Malia Martinez is using her newfound sewing skills to make bandanas for shelter animals in hopes of getting them adopted.
Every week, Malia spends most of her time in her grandmother’s home sewing when she is not in school.
She recently learned how to sew and is putting it to good use.
“I got a gift certificate for Christmas to go to start sewing lessons,” she said.
She consistently puts in the effort to perfect her craft, with a bit of help from her grandmother of course.
“I’m not a sewer,” Crystal Martinez, Malia’s mother, said. “And so my mom has helped her, my mom cuts the fabric out for her. She monitors her, she helps her when she needs to iron the fabric, things like that.”
Malia has created a lot of things, but in the last few months, she has been making scarves for four-legged friends.
“We’ve made, like, so many,” Malia said. “It’s hard to keep track. We have a bunch of them.”
Since her beloved dog Jada passed away at the age of 15, Melia has been putting her heart into her sewing projects.
“Malia gets into lots of things and when it has anything to do with caring and helping, she really puts her heart into it,” Martinez said.
Since dogs are not allowed as pets where she currently lives, Melia spends her free time at local animal shelters.
“When I go to see them in the animal shelter, it’s kind of sad,” Malia said. “So, I thought if we maybe got them a bandana, they would look cute and be like, ‘Oh, this one’s cute.’ Like, maybe I can adopt this one and they would get a home.”
Since then, Malia has spent several weeks working on dozens of bandanas in all shapes and different colors. On top of gifting the bandanas to the shelter, she also sells them at pop-up events and donates the proceeds to the animals.
“They were, like, very happy and very appreciative, which made me feel really good inside,” Malia said.
Malia’s goal is to help as many animals as possible in every way possible. She also has her little business to focus on as well.
Malia's small business is called “Sew Creative by Malia” and social media pages have been created to help get the word out.
Source: WDBJ7