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.

The Tiger Lily Tank

Project: The Tiger Lily Tank

Goals: have the tiger lily generally be recognizable as a flower, not to beat myself up for it looking amateurish (this is my first time, after all)

So, as mentioned in the previous post, I decided to cut bits from my skirt and add petals to the tank top. As you can see from the left, I first cut out a section of the skirt's fabric.

I am not, by nature, an ironer, so it was clear I had to dust off the iron and the ironing board and straighten that fabric out...

...which I kind of did. I'm not the most patient person in the world, so once it seemed fairly well ironed I was like "done." You could picture me on an aircraft carrier with a huge "Mission Accomplished" banner behind me for all I cared, I was done with ironing for the day.

Mainly because I also managed to burn myself in the 3 minutes I was working with the iron. C'est la vie, I guess.

So then I decided to sketch some stuff out, get some ideas of petal size, and I made these "patterns." I made three thick petals and three thinner petals to be alternated in the flower, much like a real tiger lily.

The time had now come to rethread Ethel (which is my machine's name, by the by) with black thread. So I got to do the one thing I'm unashamedly good at: threading bobbins. Each time I do, though, I imagine the Project Runway kids being like, "I threaded that bobbin why did you use it?"

...and I giggle because the only one I'm likely to get all pushy like that with is Pebbles (seen here sniffing around the box), who keeps sniffing around the peddle and I'm terrified she'll just hop right on it.

Ok, so I decided to do a test run of stitches on the fabric I'm using (I make that sound like it's my idea, but it's recommended fairly strongly) and one of the stitches ended up looking like this, which I was briefly disappointed by until I realized it would do for the tiger lily's spots. Improv!

Then I decided to use one of the hem stitches to sew down the middle of the petals. This may have been one of my less-good ideas; in the end, the petals look a bit busy and cluttered and I blame this step.

After doing the middle stitch on all six of the petals, I arranged them how I wanted them to look on the top. I'm still quite pleased with this arrangement, even if it's not how they ended up looking (that might almost classify as "foreshadowing").

So then I decided to make some spots on the petals before attaching them. Which can probably be counted as "misstep number 2." Talk about looking even more busy! I should've just stuck to the original plan of only using the spots to attach the petals to the top.

Alright, then I plotted out the circumference of the flower and at first I thought I was a little too generous with the dimensions (before I tried the top on). I think this came from my not having decided if I wanted the petals to overlap or be separate; looking back, I should've made a decision.

I laid out the petals on the top and was still somewhat pleased with the look of the thing, so I prompty got to stitching. I attached the ends of the petals first, so they'd have a bit of a 3D thing going on, to mimic the tiger lily's natural curling-under tendency. You can see from this picture that they are not evenly spaced; I'm gonna have to get me some tailor's chalk.

And this is how it looked, curled back on itself. I'm still feeling okay with it at this point; I feel like the little bit of purple in the middle is palatable and it looks roughly flower-like. Then I went CRAZY with the spot sewing.

Which ended up looking like this. At this point, I'm not a happy girl. My decision was to try to find some yellow fabric I don't need and sew it in the middle, star-shaped, to cover up that whole business. The problem with this genius plan? I don't own hardly anything yellow because it washes me out. So the search was on, through my old clothes pile to try find something that I could use.

The yellow problem was quickly solved, though, when I remembered I was making a tiger lily out of old skirt material with a sewing machine and I'd already taken some artistic liberties. So I made the executive decision to use bits of an old pink jumper I've got and use that in the middle. Maybe a horticulturalist will give me some gruff for not being accurate but damn them, it's a fake flower I can do what I want. As evidenced by my tone I'm STILL a little defensive about this.

I decided how big the patch should be and trimmed it...

And then sewed it on. I was pleased with how it turned out: a little homemade-looking (well, a lot homemade-looking) but the colours went well together and I was pleased with that at least.

But then I put it on and realized it looked like the flower is some sort of sea creature trying to eat my breast. But after staring at it for awhile I've decided I don't care that much, it looks nice with that skirt and it's definitely something. Also, the size is pretty good, since if it were smaller it would look a little ridiculous considering its location.

The lessons I've learned from this project are: keep things more simple and try to remember that tank tops and boobs equal stretching. BUT I don't hate it as much as I thought I would, which is fantastic.

As for my next project, I'm still not 100% confident to try the dress mod so I'm instead going to try using the button-hole feature on Ethel and modify a stripey jumper I have into a stripey cardigan.