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Inverness resident TrinityAnn Martinez, 18, has a love for sewing. Above she displays some of the articles of clothing she has created including a dress she wore to her high school prom.

TrinityAnn Martinez, 18, uses a Brother sewing machine to create many of her clothing items.

Inverness resident TrinityAnn Martinez, 18, has a love for sewing. Above she displays some of the articles of clothing she has created including a dress she wore to her high school prom.

If you can sew, you can make yourself a really cool, last-minute, hooded red cape to wear to the ROTC Military Ball.

You can take a floor-length, yellow gown, shorten it and use fabric you cut from the underskirt to bind the hem for a cute, twirly prom dress.

You can even make costumes for high school plays or make a bumble bee baby blanket for your nephew.

If you can sew like TrinityAnn Martinez, you can do all this and so much more.

“I started sewing 10 years ago in 4-H when I was 8,” said the recent Citrus High School graduate and reluctantly former 4-H member, having aged out of the youth organization.

“My first project was a blue dress, that’s still not finished,” she said. “It was a nightmare. I didn’t know what I was doing, and we only had one sewing machine and not a lot of funding ... but then we started meeting at the old canning plant in Lecanto and got donations and sewing machines and supplies.”

This past summer, TrinityAnn served as a counselor to younger kids learning to sew at the annual 4-H summer sewing camp, her last as a member.

Recently, at her home in Inverness, TrinityAnn showed the Chronicle some of her sewing projects from over the years, from stuffed toys to skirts and dresses, including some of her mistakes, like a stuffed turtle with a crooked head.

“Another nightmare project – I made a doll dress out of a really stretchy knit material, and the sewing machine ate the fabric and frayed the edges,” she said. “But I finished it. It’s in a box with the rest of my projects.”

For the past two years, TrinityAnn was part of the drama department at Citrus High School, acting on stage, working backstage, making and altering costumes.

She said she started making her own clothes last year.

TrinityAnn Martinez, 18, uses a Brother sewing machine to create many of her clothing items.

“Last year for senior photos, they said to wear something that describes you,” she said, pointing to a blue patterned, full-skirted dress with a fitted blue bodice, displayed on a dressmaker’s mannequin in her living room.

“I decided I’d make my own, because that made the most sense to me,” she said. “So, this was my senior photo dress – and it has pockets!”

Paired with the dress on the mannequin, a red, hooded cape.

“I loved this fabric and didn’t have any other use for it other than making it into a cape,” she said. “When my friend called and invited me to the ROTC Military Ball, I said, ’Why not?’ and made it last-minute.”

She said she is a master at finding fabric for practically nothing, at thrift stores and the remnant bins at fabric stores.

With two four-tiered shelves filled with fabric, containers filled with patterns and a head filled with ideas, she can never say she has nothing to wear.

That’s the best part about knowing how to sew and having the talent to do it well.

Currently, she’s making a dress to wear to the Renaissance Fair next year, with a blue soft sculpture dragon to wear on her shoulders.

“At the county fair this year, a lady made one ... and she brought it to sewing camp this year, and she let me wear it,” she said. “I walked around with it for hours and decided I wanted to make one for myself. Because, why not?”

TrinityAnn can trace much of her positive life experiences, as well as super fun times, to 4-H.

There’s her first-time ever showing a pig at the county fair this past year, being the first one to show an animal in the ring and not sure what to do – and ending up winning for “carcass,” which means her pig was more than pretty; it was premium internally.

In her 10 years with 4-H, she’s raised chickens and rabbits; gave a speech about 16-year-old Sybil Ludington, a heroine of the American Revolutionary War; and she has sung on stage.

At Citrus High School, she was part of the chamber choir and Cat 5, the all-girls ensemble group.

“One year I was at the state fair and I sang “Why Haven’t I Heard From You?” by Reba McEntire, and this lady approached me afterwards and said, ‘How would you like to sing the National Anthem before the Gator’s baseball game?’ I was 12,” she said, “And I said, ‘Yeah, sure,’ and then asked my mom, ‘Can we go on the Ferris wheel now?’

“It was supposed to be me with a bunch of other kids, but they didn’t show up. So, it was just me in my 12-year-old glory singing to a packed stadium,” she said. “There’s a video and you can hear some guy going, ‘Nice job, young lady.’ Then my mom asked if I wanted to start doing shows.”

From there she sang at the Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park’s Night of Lights, at Gaylord Palms Resort & Hotel “ICE” show in Kissimmee, the Orange Blossom Opry in Weirsdale, a veteran’s concert at the Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak and “a bunch of other stuff,” she said, “and it all started with 4-H.”

Now that she’s 18 and out of high school, what’s next for TrinityAnn?

“I really love animals,” she said. “I’ve volunteered at Nature World in Homosassa, and I know how to tube feed and I can calculate the stomach capacity of a mammal ... and I learned to catch hawks and owls – but catching the pelican was by accident.”

She had left a door unlocked and a pelican escaped and flew down the street, and she ran after it.

“So, here’s how you catch a pelican,” she said. “You have to corner it and somehow grab its beak, because if you don’t grab the beak he’s gonna get you and it’s gonna hurt.”

She said her plans are to go to the College of Central Florida for two years and then transfer to the University of Florida for their aquatic veterinary program.

She said she would also like to get into community theater, and continue sewing her own clothes and making gifts for friends and family.

“It’s weird to think that next year I won’t have a fair to do – I’ve been an exhibitor pretty much every year,” she said. “It’s weird aging out of 4-H because it’s been a really big part of my life.”

However, her involvement with the organization doesn’t have to end, said Marnie Ward,

4-H Youth Development Agent II for UF/IFAS Extension Citrus County.

“TrinityAnn has been a role model for the younger kids in the (sewing) club ... and she’s taken the skills she learned at 4-H and is sharing them and using them in real life, like she did with the school drama department making costumes. For us, that’s huge.”

Ward added that she and TrinityAnn have talked about her coming back as a volunteer.

“She’s such a well-rounded girl, and we would love to have her stay involved with us,” Ward said. “She’s that kind of girl.”

Nancy Kennedy can be reached at 352-564-2927 or by email at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com.

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