A YOUNG girl from Weymouth is spending her time in lockdown sewing quilts to donate to elderly people living in a local nursing home.

Pepper-Rose Stuart, seven, is using her mother's old sewing machine to make lap quilts which will be given to residents of Maiden Castle House care home in Dorchester.

Her mother, Stephanie Stuart, said: "I make patchwork quilts anyway as a hobby and Pepper has been watching me and she wanted to give it a go.

"I gave her my old sewing machine and since then she has been whizzing away on it.

"She wants to make around 10 to send into the nursing home which will probably take around two weeks.

"Every single evening she wants to go on the sewing machine and make more quilts. She loves it."

Pepper-Rose has chosen to donate the quilts to the Maiden Castle House care home because she has visited her grandfather in a home and wants to provide similar elderly people with lap quilts to keep their legs warm.

Her mother has a friend who works at the home and is planning on taking the quilts round and leaving them on her doorstep so that they can be delivered to the elderly safely.

Pepper-Rose has always been a charitable girl. In 2019 she cut off over 50cm of her hair to donate to the Little Princess Trust who provide real hair wigs to children and young people with cancer.

It took her two and a half years to grow her hair so that it was long enough to be donated and she raised over £100 for the charity at the same time.

Pepper-Rose suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, a condition she developed after contracting a virus when she was four years old.

Her mother thinks that might be the reason her daughter is so charitable.

Ms Stuart said: "Pepper is a very thoughtful and loving little girl and it always finding ways to give t people she doesn't know.

"I think a lot of it comes from having arthritis as when she was diagnosed we thought about raising money for the rheumatoid clinic in Southampton."

She added: "We as a family are incredibly proud of this little lady and the young person she has turned out to be."