Sew what?

Dozens of sewing machines hummed Friday at the Coeur d'Alene Shrine Club Event Center, with children feverishly pushing fabric through the feeders. Fabric covered every surface and spilled to the floor where kids sat pinning it together.

“When you see this many kids this engaged it really speaks to the value of project based learning,” retired teacher Kathy Gray said. “You don’t have to tell these kids to get to work.”

Gray volunteers to coach the children, ages 10-17, to learn to sew. The 36 kids were in their third and final day of a quilt camp, organized by North Idaho Quilters.

“Some of the older kids are experienced stitchers,” North Idaho Quilters co-leader Cherie Vidovich said.

Many of the children were returning students, who had made zipper pouches, pillow cases and pajama bottoms before graduating to the quilting course.

“I like really learning how to make clothes if I wanted to, and gifts, I guess,” said Melanie Ravello, 16.

And she loves to quilt.

“I just like seeing the finished product and how it came together,” Melanie said. “It’s kind of amazing to see. It’s also kind of a stress reliever.”

Melanie was one of the more experienced students, so she mentored some of the newer kids after making progress on her own blocks.

The students worked with 16 volunteers, many of them retired teachers like Gray, and learned the tricks and techniques of putting a quilt together.

Melanie made a quilt for her six cats, and stepped outside her comfort zone with the use of some bright colors. But her colors were not nearly as bright as Sawyer Combs’.

Sawyer, 12, was wearing a tie-dyed sweater and worked with vividly bright colors around a tie-dyed center.

For the camp, students each did their own variation of a nine-block, which is then cut in half in two directions and sewn back together to vary the pattern.

The results were wildly different, from Christmas gnomes, to soft pastels. Fabrics were in jewel tones, brights, had deer, flamingos or anything in between.

The stacks of fabric were donated from guild members, estate sales or leftover bolt ends from Shabby Fabrics.

At the end of the class, students keep what they make and also donate a pillowcase to the Shriner’s Children’s Hospital as a way to give back.

“It’s been so fun to watch them just piece together over the past few days,” Sawyer’s mom Janell Combs said. “I love the fact that my boy is interested in arts and crafts. And it’s really neat that they do this to teach kids and inspire them. It’s a dying art.”

Gray used to watch her great-grandmother quilt, hand-stitching wedding ring quilts and other blocks. She still has the sewing machine her great-grandmother bought to start machine sewing, she said.

Then she found the Quilter’s Guild and could combine the two skills of teaching and sewing.

“I like the idea of working with the kids and passing on the skills,” Gray said. “These kids are wonderful. You don’t have to use your teacher's discipline. They want to be here.”