'Cuteness with a cause': Laura Liefer sells coffee sleeves to help fund scholarships in memory of her best friend

Laura Liefer is a young woman who likes to wear her heart on her sleeve, but not in the way others might expect.

Liefer, a senior theater major at Southeast Missouri State University, has created her very own cottage industry in honor of a late friend by making and selling reusable coffee sleeves out of mostly donated scrap materials.

Each heat-absorbing sleeve is colorful and unique, clasped shut by elastic bands and standard white buttons.

Liefer sells the sleeves for $5 each, mostly via Facebook, and they look a lot like detached shirt cuffs. They're meant to be used in place of the disposable cardboard sleeves found at Starbucks and other coffee bars.

"It's been so awesome," Liefer says. "I really didn't expect the support (I've had with this project)."

Laura Liefer sews coffee sleeves and sells them to fund a scholarship in memory of her best friend, Rebecca Young. (Laura Simon)

To date, Liefer has raised enough money selling the sleeves to furnish a $500 scholarship for a high school senior in her hometown of Chester, Illinois.

She began making them with a borrowed sewing machine last November to help raise money for the Rebecca Young Memorial Scholarship, established in 2011 by the deceased student's family.

Liefer and Young, both from Chester, had been best friends since the sixth grade. But in their first semester of college, the friendship was severed permanently by a fatal car accident.

"When the wreck happened, it was finals week," Liefer recalls, continuing, "It was horrible, because you don't want to be there."

Liefer was able to get out of one of her exams, but had to soldier through the rest while communicating almost constantly with grief-stricken friends and family members back home.

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com

Young, whom Liefer described as an extremely careful, almost granny-like driver, was on her way home from her first semester at Southwestern Illinois College's Belleville campus when she died at age 18.

"It was raining that day. It was slick and she hydroplaned," Liefer says, "and someone just ran her off the road."

Young died en route to a St. Louis hospital, with family and close friends trailing behind the ambulance.

"We were all hopeful that she would make it through, but I just had a feeling *..." Liefer says.

Soon afterward, Young's family established the scholarship fund to benefit high school students interested in science, as Young was. Liefer says her friend wanted to research viruses and was keenly interested in biology.

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com

"She just wanted to change the world," she says.

But, as it turned out, the world had something else in mind.

"Rebecca was truly a gem -- high energy, intelligent, hysterical and one of the most kind hearted, selfless people you have ever met," it says on a flier Liefer uses to sell baskets of coffee sleeves. "Rebecca was deeply loved and will be forever missed."

In high school, the two girls were always studying together, always helping pull each other through their advanced placement courses. Where Young was gifted in the sciences, Liefer, who works in the costume shop at Southeast, was equally gifted in the arts.

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com

Little did either know Liefer's aptitude for craftiness would lead to "Heart on Your Sleeve -- Cuteness with a Cause," which is what she calls her coffee sleeve-sewing venture.

Although she didn't get started right away with the effort, mainly because of school obligations, she decided to make it happen before fall break last year.

Since May, she had been working at a Starbucks store, and Liefer got the idea for her homemade, reusable coffee sleeves as a fundraising mechanism, and looked up a pattern on Pinterest.

So she borrowed her mother's "old creaker" of a sewing machine and started dashing off coffee sleeves in her spare time.

Although each sleeve now takes about 15 to 30 minutes to assemble -- and with a new sewing machine bought over winter break -- Liefer's efforts weren't smooth sailing initially.

"It's gotten a lot easier," she says. "My first few were really rough."

To learn more about Liefer's fundraising activities, visit facebook.com/pages/Heart-on-your-Sleeve-cuteness-with-a-cause. The coffee sleeves also are available at Cup N' Cork in Cape Girardeau, where several have been sold to date.