4-H Day Camp – 10/21/2023

For the 4-H Day Camp this fall, I was in charge of leading the children in their

completion of a craft project centered around hand sewing. This project was the construction of

embroidered felt leaf coasters. The plan was to have the children embroider the veins of the leaf

in the middle of one layer of a felt leaf using a backstitch. Then, the children were to line this

embroidered front layer of felt up with a plain back layer of felt and sew them together using a

simple blanket or overlock stitch.

I spent about six hours preparing for this project by buying the materials, preparing them

for the children, and separating out the materials into bags for each child to have. I bought red,

green, orange, yellow, and tan felt and red, green, orange, and black embroidery thread. Sewing

needles and scissors were supplied by the extension office and Ziploc bags were provided by my

instructor. To prep the materials, I printed out a leaf shape on cardstock paper and cut it out, then

I used a sharpie to trace the shape onto the felt many times, and I cut out two of these leaf shapes

for each leaf coaster to be made. Every child got enough supplies to make two leaf coaters. On

one of the two leaf shaped pieces of felt for each project, I drew lines to represent the leaf veins

with a sharpie. I also measured how much embroidery thread I used for my prototype leaf, added

a few inches to that length, and cut pieces of thread for the children to use. In each Ziploc bag I

put enough supplies for each child to make two leaf coasters; two felt leaves with veins, two felt

leaves without veins, and two separate pieces of the embroidery thread I had cut in different

colors.

On the day of the 4-H Camp, I spent a total of five hours at the building. This included an

hour for set up, 3 hours of running the activities for the children, and an hour for clean-up and an

evaluation conversation with my instructor, my peers who helped run the camp, and the
extension agent in charge of the camp. Unexpectedly, the project took much longer for the

children to complete than I had planned. Many of them were only able to complete either the

backstitch or the blanket stitch and not both in the 20-minute time slot they spent with me. Some

returned to my station during their free activity time to finish, but unfortunately many went home

without fully finished projects. The two major challenges for the children that I didn’t think

about before the camp were separating out strands of embroidery thread without tangling it and

starting and ending stitches without pulling knots through the felt. I supplied the children with

pieces of embroidery thread that had six strands, and I was asking them to split these pieces in

half so they could have two pieces with three strands to work with. Many of them struggled to do

this without getting the thread tangled. I also noticed that many of them would accidentally pull

their knotted thread all the way through the felt when starting their stitch because it was easy to

do so.

If I were to do this project again, I would either want to have 30-40 minutes to do the

activity with the kids rather than 20 minutes, or I would only teach them one of the two stitches I

had planned to teach them. I also would consider separating the embroidery thread into three-

strand pieces so the children wouldn’t have to do it themselves. Lastly, I would consider using a

different kind of fabric rather than felt, so it would not be as easy to pull the knotted thread all

the way through the fabric.

Most of the children at the camp seemed to enjoy participating in this project! My goal

was to teach them a few basic sewing skills, and that goal was met, even if a child wasn’t able to

finish their project. Every child learned a few useful things about hand sewing, and each of them

learned how to do at least one of the stitches I had planned! I believe this project was a success

even though more time would have been nice for the projects to be completely finished.