PORTERVILLE — Brejenn Allen started to sew hospital gowns when her father fell ill — and then, when he recovered, she began to sell them.

“Dad had a massive stroke, and he was always in the hospital, and he always had to wear these ugly hospital gowns, and I did not like it,” Allen, 17, said. “It did not make me happy, so I know it didn’t make him happy.”

So Allen began sewing the gowns, using machines from her mother’s sewing business, but soon her father’s health improved, and he no longer needed the gowns.

“He never got to wear them,” she said. “But I started it because I wanted him to wear something nice and pretty.”

Other people, she said, noticed the gowns and decided they wanted to wear them — and to purchase them. So Allen started making more of them and word of her budding business began to spread, with the help of her family members, until it grew into a company she calls “Happy P’ Jappies Designer Hospital Wear.”

Allen’s primary product is the hospital gown, but she also crafts items such as headbands for patients undergoing chemotherapy and other treatments. Over the past year or so she estimated that she filled 30 orders.

Allen operates her company in a rustic workshop tucked away in a woodsy spot of Porterville, Mississippi, right next to the home where she lives with her parents, her brother and sister. The solid wooden tables and sturdy time-worn sewing machines conjure the atmosphere of a shop that’s slipped back in time — and that’s taken an Instagram page, a Facebook account and a slick-looking website with it.

Heading up a company at age 17 may seem like a ground-breaking endeavor, but it’s not the first time Allen has found herself in such a position. At age 13, she was the only girl in an automotive technology class at John C. Stennis Vocational Complex, in the Kemper County School District, in Dekalb.

“My dad works on cars, and my granddad works on cars,” she said. “Pretty much everybody in my family had a career working on cars. That’s what they talked about, and they always drilled into my brain, ‘You’re not going to have to need a man to fix your car. You better be able to do it on your own.’”

Allen’s father, Pastor Rendell Allen, elaborated on that point as the two conversed in her shop on a recent evening.

“As a pastor, and a mentor, I experience a lot of young ladies that have had to depend on young men,” he said, adding that he’s also noticed male mechanics taking financial advantage of the young women who bring in their cars for repair.

“I didn’t want that to happen to my girls,” she said. “I want them to know something, if not everything, they could possibly learn about cars so that when they go in for an oil change, (the mechanics) won’t say you need to change your tires, or your transmission’s gone.”

Rendell Allen, who’s pastor of a church based in Gary, Indiana, where the family lived previously, expressed great pride in his daughter’s maturity.

“She’s really using her education and her experience wisely,” he said.

Allen’s shop harbors eight sewing machines, each one a bit different from the other.

On the Net

www.happypjappies.com/

www.facebook.com/HappyPJappies/

www.instagram.com/happy.p.jappies/

“This is a serger,” she said, pointing to one of the machines. “It finishes on the inside and makes this (garment) look really professional. Instead of just cutting it and leaving it fraying, it puts everything together.”

She pointed to another, which she described as a “basic straight stitcher.” It’s a common machine, a staple in many workshops, she explained.

“Grandma at home has one of these,” she said.

But Allen’s attention flows well beyond the boundaries of her shop — or, really, beyond any boundaries at all. She researched hospitals in Africa, for instance, and found Healing Stripes, a facility in Lagos, Nigeria “established by the City of David Parish of The Redeemed Christian Church of God (COD RCCG) as part of its Christian Social Reform,” as noted on its website. Allen said she was drawn to the hospital’s vision.

“I really wanted to donate to someone outside of the country,” she said. “So I sent a really pretty pink Peppa Pig (gown and bag) over there.”

She sent along a dinosaur-themed gown, as well.

Allen said her process often involves a creative give-and-take with patients who have their own ideas about how they’d like their gowns to look and feel. She mentioned a patient in California whose mother requested a unique fit and design for the gown — with a purple bow and horses on a blue background.

“I think that’s part of the fun,” Allen said. “I wanted it to be sort of like a game. When you’re in the hospital, kids may be sitting in this ugly thing, and their mom hands them a phone and says, ‘Look at this. Come up with some ideas of a hospital gown that you want.’ So they sit and they come up with, ‘I want tigers, I want purple, I want buttons and ribbons and zipper here, and some ruffles.’ It’s fun for them, and it’s fun for me to look at their creativity.”

Those ideas, she said, tend to nudge her own design schemes into motion.

“I can extract some creativity from their creativity,” she said.

As a student concentrating in art at Eastern Mississippi Community College — she’s in her second year at age 17 — Allen said she often sketches out design ideas before she sews them. She also orders materials from nearby stores such as Jerome Tank Season 2 Season in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and the Village Cloth Shoppe in Dekalb.

If Allen stands at the center of her company, her family members also play key roles. Her father heads up the marketing duties, she explained, her younger sister Brendell takes charge of social media, and her younger brother Rendell Jr. models the gowns.

“She makes me do different poses,” Rendell Jr. said with a chuckle.

The company itself sprang from a shop that Allen’s mother, Pastor Jennifer Allen, began in Dekalb called “Sow-N-Sew.” But Allen had learned sewing techniques from her mother long before that.

“In Gary (Indiana), I begged my mom to teach me to sew, and she cracked open the machine — I was about 9 — and she taught me how to make one skirt,” she said. “Then when we got here and she opened up the shop, she expanded her spectrum and taught me other things, too.”

Allen took to sewing right away.

“I’m not just like the typical girl who loves clothes,” she said. “I love fashion. I subscribe to “Vogue” … and I love to design. That’s why I’m an art major.”

Allen encourages various kinds of donations and contributions, all outlined on her website and social media pages. But her call to community members ranges beyond her shop.

“Even if you can’t support me, support some other 17-year-old girl who has big dreams,” she said.