The ladies of the Hardy United Women in Faith recently completed the first 30 handmade pillowcases to be donated to The Call for children in foster care.
According to Jean Kelly, one of the women involved in the project, the idea for the project came after a group of ladies attended a conference in Jonesboro in April of this year.
“There was a group that had a display called Sew in Love and they’ve done 500 pillowcases and planned to do 900 more. They’d been giving them out to local children,” Kelly said. “We thought it was a terrific idea. We brought it to our group and talked to The Call, and so we started sewing. This is our first attempt and we’ve now completed 30 pillowcases.”
All present agreed that the camaraderie was unmatched and that by joining together, through trial and error, there was something for everyone to do.
“The first experience was our cutting day, we probably had eight or nine volunteers come out of the church, and we had cutting boards, irons, ironing boards, lots of snacks,” said Jenise Baber, another of the volunteers. “We started to cut out the pieces and it was a great fellowship.”
Indeed, a labor of love, each pillowcase consists of three pieces and takes slightly more than one yard of fabric to complete. Baber was responsible for the material to create the first 30 pillowcases, and the ladies went to great lengths to ensure there was a variety of cases to choose from.
“We wanted to be able to appeal to the youth of all ages because there are children and youth in the program that range in age from babies to 19 and 20-year-olds. We wanted to have something that would appeal to a child, adolescent or older youth. We’ve got some juvenile kinds of things and things that are just beautiful,” Baber said.
Once delivered to The Call, the pillowcases will be placed in The Call’s store, where foster children can come and select items for themselves free of charge.
As the ladies worked, they decided to add another thoughtful aspect, a name tag sewn into each case, allowing the children to put their names on their new cases.
“Many foster children, most of them when they leave their homes to go into care, they have to carry their possessions in a trash bag, and that tugs at your heart, so this way they have a pillowcase,” Kelly said. “There is a tag that says, ‘this belongs to’ and there is a place for them to write their name in and hopefully that will be meaningful to them.”
Now that the first 30 have been completed, the women say they intend to sew many more, and donations of money, time, talent and resources would be most welcome.
“If anyone has any ideas of anything else we can do along to make it richer, better and more fun for the children, we’d like to hear their ideas. If there are needs, we’re missing, we want people to let us know, and if anyone would like to volunteer to help. You don’t have to be a member of the church,” Baber said. “If anyone would like to make donations or volunteer, they are welcome. We’re using only 100 percent cotton fabric. There is something for everyone to do. We found out the hard way that not all of us know how to sew; we don’t all have the same skills, but when we combined our skills, things just came together.”
For more information, to donate, volunteer or learn more, contact Jean Kelly by text message at 727-612-6945.
Lauren is a an award-winning journalist who decided after 10 years of newspaper experience to venture out. Hallmark Times was born.
