A Hamburg Middle School student sewed up the competition at the annual District 4-H Fashion Review this summer.
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Seidel, 11, daughter of Les and Kelly Seidel of Windsor Township, was named Junior Best of Show for skillfully crafting an elegant, green, lace-covered party dress.
At the Fashion Review on June 30, which includes students from Berks, Lehigh and Northampton counties, 4-H members between the ages of 8 and 18 met at a church in Allentown for workshops and a community service project. One of the workshops, “Judging,” gave the students the opportunity to display their homemade items in a fashion show. Among the pillows and backpacks on display, Lizzie wore her pretty frock and took top honors. She won a First Place ribbon and a basket, donated by the Home Sewing Center of Allentown, filled with sewing notions, such as thread, fabric, chalk and tweezers.
“I was really surprised when I won,” Lizzie said. “The dress was a spring project. I got the idea for it from my Mom.”
The main challenge, she said, was finding the fabric and the pattern.
The Seidels went to Jo-Ann Fabrics to look for patterns.
“They don’t have a lot for teenage girls,” her mother, Kelly Seidel, said. “So we picked something in the adult section and cut it down. I was very proud of her. She put in over 80 hours on her dress, made a few mistakes and learned even more. All of her hard work paid off!”
According to one of her instructors, Karen Mohn, Lizzie was very persistent with this difficult project.
“She had a lot of optimism, and was diligent with each step of the pattern, even the three hems, which required a lot of patience,” Mohn said. “She is a great influence to her peers, showing that challenges can be rewarding.”
A 4-H member since the age of 9, Lizzie was inspired by her Nanny, Shelby Leymeister, and her grandmother, Jody Fox, to begin sewing.
“When I was younger, I thought sewing looked cool and I wanted to try it,” Lizzie explained. “My Nanny got me a small sewing machine and some fabric. Eventually the machine broke, but when I joined 4-H, they gave me another sewing machine.”
Her first projects were a drawstring bag, shorts and a shirt.
Since then she has learned how to cut out patterns and make them bigger and smaller to accommodate for different sizes. Lizzie enjoys spending time with her friends in 4-H and with her instructors, Karen Mohn and Caren Cornman, who divide up the year into cooking in the fall and sewing in the spring.
“Starting in the next month or so, we’ll make soup, applesauce and cookies,” Lizzie said. “We try some of the cookies after we make them, but then we box the rest up and send them to soldiers overseas.”
Lizzie’s altruism runs in the family. The Seidels are members of the Virginville Grange and the Tilden Elementary School PTO, and Lizzie is a member of the school’s softball team as well as the Virginville Junior Grange. This July she spent a week with her father and brother at the State Junior Grange camp in Howard, PA.
Even though her energy will soon be directed toward cooking, Lizzie won’t wait until spring to begin sewing again. She’s already working on a new dress – a summery, casual one with colorful flowers on the bottom and pink sparkly fabric on the top. And in the words of another Lizzie – Elizabeth Travis Johnson, author of The Complete Book of Sewing For Children – “What you cook is eaten so quickly. When you sew, you have something that will last to show for your efforts.”
