She's Crafting Up A Storm For Fair Ribbons

DAYTON – Angie Dedloff has been crafting for as long as she can remember.

An avid 4-H member since she was in fourth grade, 14-year-old Dedloff makes crafts and enters them into the Columbia County Fair every year.

“I’ve always been doing crafts,” Dedloff said.

Dedloff said the fair is a great experience because she has the opportunity to see what everyone else crafted and get ideas for new crafts.

She said she enjoys mak- ing recycled crafts in 4-H and at home. Newspapers, magazines and everything she sees could be a craft and she shares that mentality with her friends.

“My friends all like to craft,” Dedloff said.

Dedloff and her friends get together to make crafts and share ideas for other projects they want to do or have done.

“Every time we come home (from spending time together) we always bring something new we’ve made,” Dedloff said.

Her 4-H group spends a lot of time on crafts, and everything the group makes is entered into contests at the fair.

Much of Dedloff’s craft- ing is inspired by her 4-H leader, Wendy Frame.

Frame said Dedloff is a hard worker whose crafts demonstrate her determina- tion.

“She’s amazing,” Frame said. “She really loves craft- ing and she always does a great job on everything she does.”

Frame said Dedloff al- ways goes above and beyond in all of the crafts she enters into the fair.

Dedloff started participat- ing in 4-H in fourth grade and was in the group of the youngest participants and now is part of the oldest group. She said she enjoys being an older member of the group because she has the opportunity to teach and guide some of the younger kids.

“You get to share your ideas,” Dedloff said.

Dedloff’s ideas have led her to create projects on her own, some of which without the guidance of patterns or leaders.

“She does some wonder- ful duct tape bags and backpacks that she taught herself how to do,” Frame said.

And she hasn’t been con- strained to what she knows how to make already. Dedl- off continues to expand her crafting abilities.

Recently, Dedloff went to a quilting camp and she will be entering what she quilted into the fair.

Dedloff’s love of craft- ing influences her favorite subjects in school as well. She said one of her favor- ite classes was woodshop because of the things she learned to make.

The class made lawn chairs, but she and a friend wanted theirs to be differ- ent from what the rest of the class was making.

“So we made a lawn chair for little kids,” Dedloff said.

In the class she also made a bar stool, a jewelry box and a step stool.

Recently, she’s been do- ing more sewing as well as making things out of clay and beads, inspired by her recently pierced ears and the endless options for earrings. She also has been making hemp bracelets, magazine bowls and purses.

She said they’re great as gifts but she also loves to carry her creations around.

“You get to say ‘I made this’ when people ask where you bought it,” Dedloff said.

One thing she loves about crafting –no two projects will look the same.

“We all make the same thing but they don’t turn out the same,” she said. “Some- one always has something that turns out very different.”