May 14 2017

Make Your Own Troop Crest

Reminiscing    2 Comments    , , ,

I’ll be honest – the past few weeks have been bummers Girl Scout-wise on many levels, but I’m looking forward to our Cadette camping trip to the GS Weekend at Chimney Rock next week.  The sun’ll come out… tomorrow!

Here’s a flashback Troop 20 post.  I haven’t done one of these in a while.

When we became Juniors, it was time for us to pick our own troop crest.  I was so excited to finally get one!  Being the Girl Scout nerd that I was at the time (because you know, I’m not one now), I remember looking over the available troop crests and wondering – would we have a bluebird?  Or a pine cone?  Maybe even a clover! 

The possibilities are endless!

So one meeting, Mrs. Vickers announced to us that we would be making our own troop crest!  You may be thinking, what a great idea!  But it haunted and followed me the rest of my Girl Scout days as a girl.

I don’t remember if we voted on it or if Mrs. Vickers picked it out, but we were to have a Daisy as our troop crest.  I thought, “Ugggghhhh… how boring.  EVERYBODY has a Daisy as their troop crest!”  So I was bummed from the beginning.  I’m thinking we did this as part of a badge requirement, so we used embroidery or stitching or some kind of whatever sewing technique to create it.  I don’t know.  As you can see, I learned so much from this project.  I’m just happy I can sew on buttons and patches today.  And I can kinda sew a hem.  Kinda.  It’ll be crooked, but the next time someone complains, they’ll get a hem made out of staples.  That’ll teach ’em.

Anyway, I really don’t remember a lot of what went into this, but I do remember mine starting off great but then descending into this lopsided flower that would have driven any OCD person crazy.  I became very frustrated about halfway through and wanted to quit or start over.  But I was told, “It looks great!  Keep going!”  And I finished.

What was once a great source of excitement turned into disappointment in this young Junior’s mind.  And as you know, once your troop has a crest, it’s yours for the rest of the troop’s existence.  So this sad Daisy flower followed me around the rest of my years.  I would gaze longingly at other troops with Bluebirds or Robins on their sashes.  Every once in a while, another Girl Scout would peer at my crest and say, “Ummmm… did you buy it looking that way?”  Even as a Senior, I was embarrassed to be wearing something that my 4th grade self awkwardly created in frustration.

But now that I’m 40-something, it doesn’t look so bad.  It kind of has a charm about it.

But it is lopsided.

2 COMMENTS :

  1. By cathyf on

    Now they let daisies and brownies have troop crests…

    We have always had a multi-age troop, and so we picked out a troop crest back in the day so that juniors and cadettes could share something. My last girls of that original troop bridged to adult last year, and just in time, because they had discontinued our crest and I had run out of my stash.

    Uniforms have become so sloppy/casual that it hardly seems worth the trouble (and expense) of a troop crest. What we have that ties all of our age levels together and makes us unique as a Girl Scout troop is that when my girls are in uniform they are IN UNIFORM. Khaki pants/skirts/shorts and white polo with the sash or vest. (It helps that this is their school uniform!)

    Reply

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