Sewer stitches up funds for Steinbach food bank with bags made from throwaways

One man has meticulously stitched together over 850 bags to sell in Manitoba and northwestern Ontario, helping feed the 1,700 people who use the Steinbach area food bank.

Retired gym teacher Peter Dick uses furniture swatches that would otherwise go to the landfill to make the $5 bags, and 100 per cent of the proceeds go to the food bank.

"It gives me joy to give new life to something that has been thrown away by people," Dick said.

The sturdy bags can hold four four-litre jugs of milk, with pockets on the inside to store wallets, phones and keys.

Dick has also helped other volunteers from Grace Mennonite Church, which he attends, make over 840 quilts to be donated overseas. He stitched leftover material from those to create over 3,000 smaller bags for health and school kits donated all over the world by the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC).

Dick's former phys-ed student Ken Dyck is now the executive director and operations manager of South East Helping Hands, the Steinbach food bank.

When Dyck was still a food bank volunteer and working at Dufresne Furniture in Steinbach, Dick told him he was seeking thick furniture swatches to create patterned bags for the MCC thrift store.

Dyck made sure he got old swatches from the store and started selling the bags in Dufresne.

The money started going to the food bank, which feeds nearly 400 families every two weeks.

"Our community is fantastic. People like this is what keeps us going here," Dyck said.

Decor-Rest Furniture sales representative Craig Skene helped Dick step up his charitable hobby six years ago, when Skene was in Steinbach on a work trip.

"I'm like, hey, wait a minute. That's my fabric. What's going on? So I grab the bag, and it's really cool," Skene said.

He was impressed Dick was using something that was normally thrown out every year to make the high-quality bags.

Skene was even more impressed that Dick did not dip into any of the proceeds, even when he bought a new machine for its automatic threader and had it shipped from Vancouver Island, allowing him to bump his output to five bags per day.

Now Skene drops off a box of 700 swatches at a time for Dick to stitch into 100 bags.

"I just thought it was a beautiful thing that he's doing, and I wanted to support him," Skene said.

Demand for the bags jumped again when Skene's client in Thunder Bay saw a bag and ordered 100, with a cheque going straight to South East Helping Hands.

Scott Reid of Reid's Furniture is waiting for another delivery of the bags, because they're quickly running out, although he's received 600 in two years. He was giving the bags away to his customers, but people started coming in, asking to buy them.

"Keep them coming," Reid said.

"He should be charging more than five bucks for these things, because they're definitely worth it," he said, praising Dick's charity.

Artist behind bag maker

Dick says his wife, Thelma, is the artist, choosing patterns that go together well.

The two were widowers when they got together 28 years ago, three years before Dick opened a door to a hobby that turns trash into treasure.

"I was looking around her house, and I was in the basement. In the closet, I opened the door and there was a black garbage bag full of all kinds of garbage — I thought," Dick said.

Thelma explained the patches inside were for quilt making.

"I stood there and looked at those patches and thought, 'I'm retired. What am I going to do?'" Dick said.

He joined his wife and a group of women at their church and started sewing, teaching himself how by reading a sewing machine manual and getting tips from the quilters.

"I just thank God for bringing this to me so that I have something which brings me satisfaction, that I'm doing this thing and it helps others," Dick said.