4Hin' it

Tonight was Sterling's first night of sewing through 4H.  He was beyond excited.  He had been asking for a week or so when sewing class was going to start.  This kid loves all things crafty.  Shoot, if there had been glitter fabric his head may have exploded.  His glitter obsession shall be saved for another post.

We had the car loaded with my sewing machine and all of our supplies.  We arrived a few minutes late due to swimming class, which was just fine.  We were able to jump right in.

The woman leading the class was from WSU.  She is a volunteer with part of their extension program.  She was fantastic.  The first project that she had the kids work on was a tree ornament.  Sterling was so excited he could hardly sit still.  He was able to get the machine threaded with a little help from mom.  Let me tell you when his lead foot hit the foot controller the fabric went a flying!  Whoa, whoa, whoa.  We gotta slow down here.  I had visions of his 16th birthday and his lead foot hitting the gas and taking off down the road.  Hopefully this kid will not have the same love affair with muscle cars as his mama. Fat chance.  Any of you that have seen his hot wheels collection know that his obsession with cars goes beyond his mamas.

Marilyn, the instructor, took care of things quickly.  She placed a shim in the foot pedal in order to keep ol' lead foot at a reasonable pace.

Sterling got his tree done and was ready to trim his threads.  Lets just say thankfully mama still has both eyes after this evening.

He was ready to move on to the next project.  A very cute travel tissue cover.  He carefully picked out his fabric and thread.  He wanted to make sure the thread matched as the instructions suggested.  In this project he was required to use the iron.  Again a little scary.  Good thing his teacher taught the kids about fire safety at school today.  We needed to go over that once again when it came to the iron.  I just kept reminding him it was similar to the glue gun.  VERY HOT.

All in all it was a successful evening.  The teacher said he was a very good student and looked forward to seeing him in two weeks.

Sterling is also in a 4H group called Adventures in Family Living.  This class offers a lot of variety.  Each meeting the kids have a different project they work on.  It can be anything from cooking to making bird houses.  This past class the kids worked on felted balls.  The basic idea is to make a wool yarn ball, shrink it in the washer and dryer, and then needle felt designs onto them.

4H has been a great experience so far for all of us.  We have met some really nice people and Sterling really loves it.