My First Value Project - Faith

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When I turned twelve years old, I became part of the Young Women in my church. Young women are encouraged to participate in a program called “Personal Progress.” This program focuses on eight values which teach me who I am as a daughter of God. The values are: faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice and accountability, good works, integrity and virtue. Learning and acting on these values will help me be a faithful young woman. I want to help build the kingdom of God.

Each value has a list of several activities to complete. Once I have completed those activities, I choose a project to do that is related to the value. The project must take at least ten hours of work. I started with the value of faith. One of the practices of my church is to pray. I was having trouble remembering to say my morning prayer. So, my mom suggested that I make a pillow with the words “don’t forget to pray” on it. Every morning when I made my bed, I would see the pillow and remember to pray. I thought it was a good idea.

The first thing I did was to make the design. I love cats, so I used a picture of a sleeping cat and some flowers from an embroidery transfer design. I traced everything onto a paper the size of the pillow top. We don’t have a light box, so I taped everything to the window to trace. I found a cute font on the computer and printed the words. Then I taped the words to the design also.

Once I had the design on paper, I took a transfer pen and traced the design onto the pillow top.

Then I chose the colors I wanted to use, and began embroidering the design.

After I finished the embroidery, I made a little patchwork border from fabric scraps and sewed them around the edge. Then I sewed a backing for the pillow top and it was finished.

The project actually took about 16 hours and I love how it turned out. The pillow does help me remember to say my prayers, as long as it isn’t buried under a pile of clothes on my bed. That is another project waiting somewhere down the road, lurking in the bushes. Maybe I’ll report on solving that problem later.

Respectfully submitted by Miss Abigail.