My 4-H Journey, Part 1

When most people hear the word sewing, I know exactly what comes to mind.

Your grandma.
Handmade dresses.
Possibly some aggressively decorative towels or doilies that only came out for company.

Or maybe you think sewing is something you have to be old or crafty to do.

Let me clear something up right away:
I am nobody’s grandma — and I love to sew.

But here’s the twist I don’t usually lead with:
I didn’t want to sew. At all.

In This Chapter

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The Stereotypes I Believed About Sewing

I didn’t grow up dreaming of a sewing machine.

In my mind, sewing belonged to another generation. Another personality type. Someone naturally patient and calm — which, at the time, I was… not.

So when my mom signed me up for sewing through 4-H, it wasn’t because I begged for it.

My grandpa did 4-H. My dad did 4-H. So it was basically written in the stars that I’d do it too.

For those unfamiliar, 4-H is a youth development program focused on leadership, responsibility, and community involvement. And in my small-town world, you usually fell into one of three camps:

1. You wanted something to do in the summer
2. Your parents needed somewhere to drop you off for a few hours
3. Or — you were there to draw blood and claim your spot in the winner’s circle.

I didn’t start out in that third group.
But I absolutely ended up there.

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You Can’t Just Sign Up for One Project

In theory, you could choose just one 4-H project.

But then how would you win all the ribbons?

So I signed up for several: gift wrapping, forestry, cake decorating, corn, beans, wheat (my dad was a farmer — grain was a given), archery, fashion merchandising… the list went on.

Cake decorating deserves its own moment of respect. It’s an art form. And after staying up until 3 a.m. multiple nights before check-in, I knew two things for sure:

• I could do it
• I did not want to do it forever

Forestry was actually kind of cool. You learned which leaves came from which trees, hunted them down in the wild, compared them to a book, labeled them neatly, and sent them off on a poster board.

Nowadays there’s an app for that.
Point, click, and it tells you the tree — and probably what you’re doing wrong with it too.
(Spoiler: mine usually just needs water)

But then… there was sewing.

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Enter: The Dreaded Sewing Project

Then came sewing.
Cue dramatic music.

Sewing required something extra.

Instead of working at home, we had to go to the elementary school basement — to the art room — for two solid weeks. Fifteen girls. One instructor. No parents.

At the time, this sounded like my personal nightmare.

The instructor was an older woman who knew sewing inside and out. She taught us how to read patterns, follow instructions, and do things properly — which, looking back, saved a lot of yelling and hair-pulling at home.

But sitting in a basement with fifteen other girls and a cantankerous instructor was not my idea of summer fun.

And yet… something happened there.

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The First Stitch That Changed Everything

Somewhere between learning to follow a pattern and realizing the machine wasn’t actually out to get me, sewing stopped feeling impossible.

It wasn’t magic.
It wasn’t instant love.

It was curiosity.

I learned that if you can read instructions, follow a sequence, or even find Where’s Waldo, you can sew.

Fashion started to feel less like a mystery and more like a language — one that expressed personality, mood, and creativity.

Sewing was simply how those ideas took shape.

And without realizing it yet, I had picked up the very first thread of something that would stay with me for a long time.

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Sew What’s Next?

At this point in the story, I still didn’t know where sewing would lead.

I just knew something had shifted.

Curiosity had shown up.
And sometimes, that’s all it takes.

If you want to see how this reluctant beginning turned into ribbons, discipline, and a whole lot of learning — the story continues here:

👉 Read Part 2: My 4-H Sewing Journey and the Lessons That Shaped Me

No pressure.
Just the next chapter.

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