During the week of June 21st to the 25th, eight 4-H’ers and assisting adult leaders joined together at the San Saba Homemaking Building to participate in the 4-H Sewing Camp. The 4-H’ers were returning from Clothing Fun Day, held on June 2nd, to tackle a more challenging project of their choice.

After learning the basics of how to sew, thread a machine, cut, and pin fabric the 4-H’ers were ready to learn some new tricks of the trade. While selecting their pattern at the store, they learned that depending on what size you wanted your project to be you had to buy certain measurements of material. It is important to keep in mind, while selecting material, what it is you are making. If the material is too thin or too thick, you may experience some difficulty while sewing. When all the necessary materials were gathered, the projects commenced.

The 4-H’ers soon learned the challenges involved with cutting material out with a pattern. It is very important to follow the pattern’s directions when folding the material, placing the pattern on the material, and creating the directional markings on the material. If any of these were to have an error, the rest of the project would go downhill. The 4-H’ers also learned how time consuming the placing, pinning, and cutting became when working on projects of a larger scale.

New sewing skills were learned while attending sewing camp. 4-H’ers learned how to create buttonholes, elastic waistbands, hand stitching, and ironing. It was interesting to see that the same projects had instructions that were very different. A person would be surprised to find that there are many different ways to apply straps to a handbag, or waistbands to a pair of pajama bottoms.

By the end of the week the 4-H’ers projects were looking fantastic and near completion. The different projects included a baby blanket quilt, two handbags, three pairs of pajama bottoms, four pillows, and one blouse. The 4-H’ers were all very proud of their accomplishments and plan on experimenting with different patterns and projects in the future.