This Sewing Project Wins a Guinness World Record!

Sewist’s Name: Dr. Dan and Jeanine Yeager from Iowa City, Iowa

Type of Project: Inflatable Awareness Ribbon

Pattern: Original Design

Featured Date: 12-13-23

Hi, I’m Dr. Dan Yeager from Iowa City, Iowa. My wife and I did a unique sewing project in paying it forward for breast cancer patients and survivors.  It is my understanding that our friend and inspiration, Nancy Zieman, passed away from the same terrible disease a number of years ago, so this might be pretty close to all ours hearts and minds.  

This project was the result of my wife’s journey and recovery with breast cancer and it all started out with cookies !

It is a little lengthy to describe exactly what this is and where we are in the story but if you would like to get the full story we did a little YouTube video for the folks that helped to set the project up for the race/walk as a presentation for the volunteers that worked our portion of the project.  The video can be seen below. It has music and commentary (and some gentle humor). It is entitled “Sewing in Pink: Our Cancer journey.”

Now to the specifics; 

All of the items shown were designed and sewn by Dr. Dan & Jeanine Yeager from Iowa City , IA.  We used to watch Nancy’s program together on occasion as Jeanine is a quilter and clothing seamstress and I (Dan) would do the quilting on a long arm Nolting MFG. machine.

The fabric was rip stop nylon that was polyurethane coated on one side.  We tried using standard rip stop, but it failed. (See the video for our failures.) We used over 200 yards of fabric…

We used a couple of different machines; a simple light industrial Singer machine, a beautiful Husqvarna Designer 1, and a couple of sergers.

I made our own pattern and we test-sewed a miniature model to get the assembly order straight so we only had one outside seam. (See the video for more information.) We used a modified flat fold seam with 3 rows of strength stitches on each seam.

The back story is in the video, but as of a few months ago, we received a Guinness World Book of Records Award for the “World’s Largest Inflatable Awareness Ribbon!”  All this was done to garner attention to the E.F.Y. Race Against Breast Cancer fund located at Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and the importance of mammogram and breast exams.  

This year’s event set another new record with over 16,500 + registrations. All the money raised for this foundation goes toward covering mammograms, treatments and recovery for the uninsured or underinsured in this area of Iowa.

Thanks so much for featuring our project!

Dr. Dan and Jeanine Yeager

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