Proud to be from Pittsburgh: The Magic Yarn Project

PITTSBURGH — A stay at the hospital is difficult for any patient and especially for young children fighting scary diseases. One group is trying to help these children with a lot of yarn and magic.

Channel 11 checked out a workshop where volunteers were learning to make ordinary yarn into extraordinary wigs. Two nurses started the Magic Yarn Project a few years ago in Alaska. Jessica Ash brought a chapter to Pittsburgh.

"My cousin is diagnosed with Lymphoblastic Leukemia at the age of eight," she said. "Being at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh and being around the children that have been diagnosed really has touched my heart."

She wanted to help the children she saw at the hospital and found the Magic Yarn Project's website. The organization makes wigs that look like popular Disney princesses and superheroes.

"Everything is 100 percent free," Ash said. "No child and no parent pays for these wigs."

Jessica has already made dozens of wigs herself and loves handing them out at the hospital.

"It's hard not to get emotional about it," she told Channel 11.

She's now enlisting volunteers to help her make even more of these wigs for local hospital patients.

"Just to realize you're touching a child's life or a mother for the first time is seeing her child smile since being diagnosed, it's very touching, to see just joy brought to their lives," she said.

To learn more about the Magic Yarn Project and how you can get involved with a yarn donation or even with making the wigs, click on this link: https://themagicyarnproject.com/jessicaa/

Cox Media Group