Apron Quest: The Final (?) Adventure

the ultimate apron

I have made a whole bunch of aprons in my quest for the ultimate apron.  I tinkered with several patterns until I either decided that they weren't right for me, or until I got them to fit properly.  I have given away 3 of these aprons to family: Helen, Rachel, and most recently Aurora, and that's not counting the cafe aprons that I made for Emily.

The one I gave to Aurora was one I liked and had planned to keep, but it was more thrilling to me that Aurora wanted it.  Serendipitously, the previous week I had found the exact same fabric at the thrift shop, and plenty of it.  Looked like someone had started to make curtains and quit halfway through.  In addition to the curtain pieces, there were 3.5 yards of new yardage (and the curtain panels still new too, only partly finished). This lot worked out to about 25 cents per yard, probably an all-time-low.  Love the thrift shops!


Aurora said something about expressing her inner girliness by wearing the apron while baking, and I decided to take that idea and run with it as I made another bias apron from the paisley fabric.  I recently scored a big bunch of rick rack on eBay and I went all out with the rick rack.

FOUR kinds of rick rack

I also tweaked the pattern a bit more:   more coverage through the bust and 4 darts for shaping, and a bit more reach around the back.  I lengthened it and tried a scalloped edge again.  This one is definitely a keeper. I love the girliness of the heart pockets and all the rick rack, and the black paisley is just right.  For the pockets I used, for the first time, a bit of a beautiful pink paisley that I bought at Liberty's in London back in 1986.  One of my post-retirement resolutions is to use things and not hoard them.  After 24 years I think it was time to dip into the Liberty lawn.

Other recent projects:

A little bib for baby Carla

sweetness for a sweetie pie

Emily's cafe aprons

Each apron is reversible, with a plain side and an embroidered side.

The design is her own.

embroidered dragon

gold thread

bleach-resist dragon

I made two reversible aprons and practiced machine embroidery. 

Learned how to reverse a design (easy:  select and drag it through to the other side.  everything is easy once you figure it out!)


I liked the pattern and the reversible construction was very interesting, but I don't like the finished product.  They look fine, but the pockets are all wrong.  I had to enlarge the pattern, one size definitely does NOT fit all! and that put the pockets too far around the back side.  I added a small cell phone/iPod pocket toward the front, and it looked cute but that still didn't fix the problem.  Not keepers.


And finally, Sophie got a pair of wings.   Just because.  I think she deserves them, don't you?