Members of the Brewer Stitchers Club have been on pins and needles – sewing, that is – for 11 years. Dot Clark formed the group with three other members in 1993, the year she retired from her career as a public health nurse.

The group’s 24 members display a broad range of skill and expertise. One member is an expert at sewing lingerie, another member designed a needlepoint piece based on a child’s drawing and another, who does not sew, does filet crochet pieces and recently learned the art of Teneriffe embroidery, a kind of needle weaving. Another member has expertise on various makes of sewing machines, including the 12 she owns – four Singers, three Vikings, a Sears model, two Berninas, a Pfaff, and an antique Singer treadle machine – and four sergers. Not unusual. Several members own more than one sewing machine because different machines have different stitch functions.

“We started with three and the next month we had six members,” Clark recalled. “We began in Brewer and all the members were from Brewer.” But word got around and it wasn’t long before women from Levant, Hermon and Kenduskeag wanted to join, too.

“Our first project as a group,” Clark said, “was making garden hats. I still have mine.” The members met at a fabric shop, now out of business, in Brewer, owned by Marilyn Amsted for the hat excursion.

Clark started sewing out of necessity in the 1950s making clothing for her two young children. “You made what money you had stretch as far as it would go,” she said. To save the cost of buying patterns, and because she didn’t know how to use one at that point, her mother showed her how to make a pattern of her own. She laid her children down on the floor on newspaper and traced around them, then used the tracing to cut out the fabric. “In those days,” she said, “everyone sewed.”

She recalled buying cotton fabric at Ferris’ Department Store in Brewer for 10 cents a yard. In those days, Sears and Freese’s also sold fabric.

But when Clark took up her career in nursing, she left sewing behind until her retirement.

Group member Bonnie Hayes started sewing when she was 5 years old. “My mother helped me make a tiny quilt to enter in the Hermon Fair in 1934,” she said. She won a blue ribbon and she still has the little quilt.

Like many other women, Hayes took up quilting on a grand scale in 1980. One of her recent pieces she made to display her collection of costume jewelry brooches. “I needed a place to display them rather than have them put away in a drawer,” she said. She found an idea she liked in a magazine and adapted it for her own use.

The purpose of the Brewer Stitchers, Clark said, is to enjoy, learn, talk and socialize. “We have few rules and no dues,” Clark said.

An important part of membership in the group is taking part in community sewing projects. The women make bibs for residents of the Levinson Center, lap quilts for the hospital chaplaincy program and the palliative care department at Eastern Maine Medical Center, blankets for Project Linus and fleece mittens, hats, scarves, blankets and pillows for the children’s center at Manna Ministries. Group members share the tasks of pinning pattern pieces, cutting out the fabric, stitching the pieces and ironing.

“And in between we have our own sewing projects,” Clark said. “We have so many talented members.”

Three of the group members, Sherrill Libby, Betty Arnold and Carolyn Brown serve as needlework judges at various area fairs. And member Kathy Childs conducts frequent sewing classes in Hampden. Childs is also a member of the Bangor Area Sewing Guild.

Until this year, the Brewer Stitchers Club was affiliated with the Bangor Area chapter of the American Sewing Guild. But members decided they wanted less structure, Clark said, and opted out of the affiliation. Some Brewer Stitchers, however, continue to maintain membership in the guild.

Last year the Brewer Stitchers produced a cookbook, “Sew, You Can Cook!” Proceeds from the sale of the cookbook are used to purchase fabrics for the group’s community service sewing projects. The cost of the cookbook is $10.

Clark said she likes sewing because “it’s nice to be productive. It exercises your mind. You start with a basic outline of what you want [a pattern] and you can do what you want with it.”

“Even your mistakes can come out beautiful,” she said.

The Brewer Stitchers Club meets at 1 p.m. the first Thursday of each month at the Hannaford Training Center building, Maine Avenue, Bangor. To learn more about the group or to purchase copies of the cookbook, call Clark at 989-4130.