DECATUR - Standing beside the work table, she still could just barely see over the sewing machine bed. But standing was the only way she could reach the foot controls to make the machine work and still guide the fabric being hemmed through a sewing machine.

None of this, however, deterred five-year-old Laila Scott. She stood beside the chair and ran the sewing machine, then cut the threads, just like the older students as Brenda McPheron talked her through the process.

At 10, Hunter Tucker had no problem reaching the controls or the machine. And he had no trouble smiling, whether he was cutting, hemming or stitching. He grinned when Dorothy Sebok reminded him how to hold his hands and guide fabric.

He continued smiling when Sebok cautioned, "Now slow down here because you are going around a curve.

Treshail Reid, 13, a student at Stephen Decatur Middle School, was carefully methodical as she sewed. She was making stockings for soldiers, she said.

"She doesn't like to (sew) fast," McPheron said. "Some of the boys turn it all the way up."

Laila, Hunter, Treshail and the other students participating in programming through GUM Park were intent on finishing the Christmas stockings they've been working on for weeks with help from volunteers from the Decatur Quilters Guild.

"We're teaching them how to cut and sew. We love it," Sebok said.

The students did the entire stocking project, even labeling each one with GUM Park identification designed by McPheron. Fabrics were donated.

"They came from a lot of places," said Shirley York, another guild volunteer.

The stockings made by the students are for Operation Santa, an organization which will see these Christmas stockings and others get stuffed and sent to persons serving active military duty.

Julie Hensley and Lori George, chair and co-chair of the Decatur chapter of Operation Santa, said that they have more than 5,000 Christmas stockings in hand, well surpassing their goal of 3,500 because of groups like the students at GUM Park, the Decatur Quilters Guild and the Girl Scouts of Central Illinois.

"We have no other groups that have done as many," said Hensley, with the 20 GUM Park students making well more than 200. The guild's stockings numbered 600, the Scouts 400.

"It's all about giving," George said, "something maybe we've forgotten."

Bev Stern, who along with her husband Mel, directs the after-school program at Grace United Methodist Church, said the students made stockings over several weeks.

"The older kids help the younger kids out. When they aren't sewing, they're writing letters," she said.

Artonia Dear, 11, said she was at least familiar with sewing because of some things her mother had taught her.

"It's like fun," she said, "because we're making (stockings) for someone and we're helping people.

"The young kids do more sewing," she explained. "We do more cutting."

Stern said this isn't the first time the quilters have stepped in to help with GUM Park projects. Last year when volunteer Sharon Thompson, also a quilter, discovered some students weren't familiar with the art, she and others led the students through making lap quilts. Now, with the after school program's own sewing machines, students will make their own stockings once this project is completed, said Stern.

"This is good for us," added Artonia. "It's teaching how us to sew so if we want to make something for people or for ourselves, we can."

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