The Ruffled Apron

Project: The Ruffled Apron

Goal: to practice gathering

Two of the pieces Tasha brought over yesterday were this skirt...

...and this dress. I thought they went really well together, so I thought I'd make a ruffled apron like this one out of them.

I cut all the pieces to the specifications on the website (I decided to make two ruffles from each of the pieces, then use the waistband from the skirt as the band of the apron and extra from the dress to make the straps; also, I used some more from the sheet I used for the convertible dress as the back of the apron)...

...and harvested the buttons from the dress and skirt (supercute cloth-covered buttons!).

Pebbles was running around at this time, sniffing the cloth (Tasha uses different laundry powder than I do, I guess) and then playing with the tape measure, as pictured left.

I hemmed the edges of the back of the apron...

...then hemmed the sides of the ruffles. I didn't do the bottoms because I'm l-a-z-y. I also stitched a loose stitch along the top for the gathering part.

I gathered the tops of the ruffle panels and then fit them on to the backing (step one seen here...

...and steps two through four here)

Then I stitched the straps and the band on to the edges of the apron.

Ta-da! A finished apron! You can see on the first picture just slightly where the band meets the panel on the right it's a bit bunchy, and then in the second pictures on the top left why that is. There were just so many layers going through the machine I think it got a bit confused. And overwhelmed.

I was going to give this to Tasha as a wedding present and then realized that that is very 1950's so I'm just gonna give it to her and think of something else as a present for the wedding. I'm quite pleased with it and it didn't take me very long at all.

I think this would've gone smoother if I hadn't been refashioning from a dress and skirt, both of which had pockets. That said, though, it turned out surprisingly well. My next project is a very simple one, to put an old skirt of mine under a dress I've never worn to make the dress decent enough to wear out and about. I might even do that today, since I've still got so much time.