wienerdog tricks.

Apron as Super Hero Cape

I think they might have super powers in them. Aprons, I mean. At least I think this one might. 

I found it day before yesterday at my favorite thrift shop, put it on, overhauled my sons' room (stealthily dragging out 6 bags of God Knows What, moving all the furniture, sucking up all the dust, re-hanging the pics--you know: overhauling). I also, in a matter of three days, dissected my closet, purged and re-libraried my books, and tackled my kitchen--even the silverware drawer and the weird shelves of china. Please. This Saturday it's Garage Time.

I have powers that are immeasurable. I fly over things. I throw things away. Fast.

I am Super House Girl and I will not be defeated by the powers of entropy and/or grime/slime/neglect/distraction or employment!

Okay, so it was the apron/cape + having just read this article, "Organizing For Your Personality," in July's REAL SIMPLE--which I hastily grabbed off the checkout line rack just like they wanted me to because of this very article (full text here),

which I'm happy to tell you is the first article about organizing your life that's ever done anything for me besides make me feel angry at the people who will actually do what it suggests. I tend to read magazines with a sort of not-so-veiled hostility. I won't lie: all those people with their quickly-perfected lives give me a sort of emotional rash. So I was very, very happy to find this article about organizing for your personality type. It actually made sense to me. I know: impossible. 

Maybe it was the powers of my apron allowing me to integrate otherwise impossible-to-believe information. (Or maybe it was the fact that it explained to me--based on my SCIENTIFIC PERSONALITY TYPE why I NATURALLY clump things in piles. It's because I'm Left-Brained and Visual. I can't help it. I'm just Visual.)

Baby Pumpkinhead was mesmerized by my speed and threw herself into the fray (wearing her own surging-with-power half apron.)

 

She is, as you can imagine, sooooo helllllllpppppful. Her personality type is, apparently, All-Brained and Kinetic since her job was to throw china cups and steal raisins and chocolate chips out of the pantry while I was otherwise Improving Our Family's Living Environment. 

Just another day in the life of the immeasurably powerful and apron-clad. You might want to think about putting one on the morning. . . 

One For Me.

 Dramatically lit garage-floor photo of new apron in stain-removal moment

I have made approximately 8200 aprons to date. For my friends. And my family. And friends of friends. And such, etc. etc. 

I have, to date, made one sad little un-lined apron for myself--one that crinkles into a mass of ugly whenever I wash it. It's shrivelyy, actually. Very sad. (Oh--and I made another for myself with my little sister at thanksgivingtime that's a sassy little vintage half-style number.) But no good full coverage aprons. And nothing that is Quite It yet for me.

So as a means of calming my inner wiener dog on the day that about 20 former writing students were coming to dinner, I made myself one.

It is a lovely little standard-white-duck-ish full apron that I traced from a crummy, stained one in my drawer. It has a sparkly (emotionally sparkly, not gold-flecked) yellow fat-squared gingham lining; a pocket from a potholder I found more than a year ago and have been hoarding, waiting for the right moment; 

a piece of polyester binding on the pocket from the same swatch I made Baby Pumpkinhead's first polyester dress from; and black and white gingham lining for the big pocket.

 See below for explanation of monster spaghetti sauce stains on said brand new apron

High five to myself.

This photo, apparently blurred by my lame-ish camera for ultimate dramatic effect. So effective.

And also, high five to my students who showed up and ate a truckload of spaghetti and were gracious and smiley and all-around wonderful and who made me want to have them to dinner every sunday and fill them up and send them out the door groaning-ly full. High five to them too.

 Pioneer Woman's Artichoke Dip foregrounded; Students lounging backgrounded. 

 Riley is finally full.

 Aldo isn't. Yet. (I believe he had to be carried to the car later, though, from over-consumption of spaghetti.)  

Apron for Baby Pumpkinhead

This is what I made today--just what every almost-two-year-old needs:

 

P.S. Love your responses to my call for Regulars. And you can throw your name up into those comments any time and I'll put you on the Regulars list. Because that's how we ROLL [embarassing grown-up lady airquotes] around here.
 

Right When I Shouda Been Sewing Christmas Gifts

I had a wedding to go to. And when I go to a wedding, I haul along HIS & HERS APRONS. I've made them before, but they keep getting cuter. Not lying. Wish I could quit all my jobs and open up a HIS & HERS APRONS shop. (Hey--the SOCK STORE is still in business, so why wouldn't I have a shot?)

Anyway, anybody marrying gets pyrex with lids and HIS & HERS APRONS. That's how I roll. No, I don't care what you registered for. Because I don't feel like buying you one fork. Or half a shower curtain. You get pyrex with lids (because EVERYBODY needs pyrex with lids). And you get these:

 

Normally I would have hidden a little of that fruit print inside of the HIS apron, but I didn't think this particular groom could swing any amount of, um, fruit--so I used the dark plaid to make the HERS ties two-sided. Here's the best part of these:

 

Oh, and I finished the christmas garland for myself. And it's making me incredibly Christmas Happy.

 

Just spent two hours alone in a coffee shop and--when I could have been writing the country's next great contemporary american poem by a western woman with children and a convoluted protestant family background--instead, I studied my christmas list. I wrote it. I rewrote it. I made arrows. I crossed things out. I added them back. I crossed them out again. I made a timeline. And an ordered projects list. And a--very short--To Buy list. And then I cross referenced it with my calendar.

I didn't do this because I am a stellar gift giver. I did this because I have no Making Self-Control naturally, and without extreme measures of concentration, self-fortification, goal-setting and values reassertion, I will tackle too many things for too many people. 

And, like I already said, I don't want to. Because for Christmas this year, I'm working hard to give the gift of Mom With Her Personality Intact.  And I'm finding it quite tricky. 

Best of luck to you as you work to hold on to yours.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

The Rescued Fabric Apron Kits go to . . .

#47 Cayce said:

oh my, what cuteness!!!

 

#138  Sue Cahill said:

I love the idea of an apron kit. I love using kits the first time I make something, that way I have just what I need. Very helpful.

Congrats, bloggish friends. Hope you enjoy these kits. I can't wait to dig through the list now of all your comments and check out your blogs. This giveaway is such a hoot for find like-minded nutbags. (And I mean that with all the respect due a fellow sewing nutbag.)

For those of you who didn't win, do watch for updates. I'm doing my best to get a handful up on my etsy site before Christmas arrives like a guest at 5:30 for a 6:30 dinner.

Rescued-Fabric Apron Kits (and a Nifty Giveaway)

 

I'm giving away a couple of apron kits. Yep. Even better: Apron Kits from Rescued* Fabric. Even even better: Apron Kits from Rescued Fabric to make vintage-style aprons for little people. 

Apron kits as in all-the-pieces-are-cut-and-ready-to-sew. Guy. How fun. I know.

They'll turn into something just like this one:

 

 

 

Every kit comes with fabric all cut and ready to go and super easy directions for pulling off a nifty little vintage-style apron. You just sew 'em. They're even complete with cut-to-size pieces from my vintage ric-rac stash (ric-rac=gold). [I know: I'm. So. Nice. Dangit.]

Just for the hoot of it all, I'm giving away TWO for the annual Sew Mama Sew GIVEAWAY DAY. All you have to do to be eligible is leave a comment below any time before December 6th.  I'll pick a winner by random. If you want to say something more than, "Um, Hi." then I'd love to know what you think of the whole Apron Kit thing and to hear who you'd be giving it or making it for.

Here's the fab fabric for the two I'm giving away. . .

Green Vintage Bells with Red Vintage Bells:

 

Red Vintage Bells with 70s Patchworky Accents:

 

I'm in love with the apron kit. Hope you win and get to make one. 

[*Ginger, What's "Rescued Fabric"? This is the only fabric I sew with, but I thought it would be fun to share a little, so I've put these kits together. How fun! I know. It's fabric that was going to be FORGOTTEN about if I didn't save it: but I did. I found it at a thrift store or a garage sale or on some high shelf of my husband's aunt's barn . . . somewhere like that. And then I rescued it from its sad little hiding anonymity and brought it back out in the world to be purposable. Fabric is always sad when it's hiding. It likes to be out where the people are.]

P.S. I'll ship these anywheres, so if you're an international sort of friend, feel free to jump in this giveaway pool. 

Over Here

Over here, I have this, so I've eaten like twelve burritos in three days and I'm cutting a lot of fabric. And also scowling at People. (Sorry, People.)

 Just finished this:

And also, this really did happen to me in the grocery store. And it has changed my ways. 

Bliss(es)

1. Finishing my Thanksgiving Apron and Getting the 7 yr old Man Boy to Model it:

 

No, there is not a single turkey on this apron--but I made it for Thanksgiving and my little sister is making one from another chunk of that funky fruit fabric for our own private sew-along. And yes, I got that fabric at a thrift store. Did you really wonder? The back:

 

 

2. Getting a thank you picture from my fave 3 yr old for the bday purse I whipped up for her:

 

3. Finding this rad glob of almost-purplish pink polyester--3 or 4 yds at least--at a thrift store this week (I think old polyester might be my love language):

 

4. Working on Thanksgiving and Christmas garlands. (Sooooo satisfying.)

 

5. Making homemade pretzels with the (aforementioned) 7 yr old Man Boy

 

because he got this book from the school library (Mom, I saw it on the "new books" shelf at the library and I RAN so nobody would get it before me. Classic. The boy loves to cook. He totally has an apron in his Christmas future.)

 

6. Dirt cheap garage sale fabric for Christmas gifts. Woo Hooo!

 

 

7. Raising goofballs. 

 

(A requisite cave man shot from the 9 yr old Man Boy at the rib joint where we ate last week).

A good idea and also sorry about that.

Super good Get-Ready-For Christmas idea:  my pal is dropping off her machine today so that we can hole up and sew a handful of nights together before Christmas hits. Why sew alone when you can sew together? Exactly.

This was one of our good ideas when WE were talking me down after the tiny little panic attack I gave myself after my last post about getting all I HAVE TO BE READY FOR CHRISTMAS. I practically had to use my son's inhaler from the pre-Christmas stress of it all.

 

So my genius pal suggested I make a list of FUN and NOT FUN holiday things I do. It has since calmed me considerably, and also given me great ideas for what to SKIP and what to ADD to the holiday line up of cooking, making, hosting, sending and eating.

Here's my list of NOT FUN: making too many gifts for too many people; cooking food that I don't like to cook that is all supposed to be hot at once when it hits the table and I only have one oven and I don't like hot ham; complex, expensive stocking stuffers.

Just the thought of removing those three things has lightened my holiday perspective considerably. I have cut my Make List, planned for a picnic-style ham dinner and am currently thinking about stuffing my boys' stockings with a CRAPLOAD of just one thing (all gum, all pennies, all . . . I don't know. I'm still working on this idea.)

And so those are my good ideas, friends: sew together; make a SKIP IT list; don't serve hot ham if you don't want to.

And sorry for maybe making you use your son's inhaler too. Guy.

P.S. I'll share my FUN list soon. I'm hitting the first thing on the list: make MYSELF some great new christmas decorations. So I'm tackling the fabric garlands head-on with a bunch of nifty old christmas fabric I just scored at a garage sale last weekend. 4 BUCKS FOR THE WHOLE BAG. I'll let you know when it's all ready to hang.

Craft Debt #7 (Desperately Cute Kitchen Apron): CHECK

(Craft Debt Update.) My goal: REALLY cute Kitchen Apron that will make her sigh from disbelief at its cuteness when she puts it on to cook.

Mission Accomplished, Tom Cruise. 

I think you already know this about me, but I love me the apron. They never get old for me. I've made and remade and re-envisioned the basic vintage apron that The Chicken served up in her first book and the straightforward instructions for this apron have been worth the cost of the book for me.  So yesterday I was at it again with this little number:

Don't think of that as a blurry photo: think of it as an action shot. It's windy here today.

I found this little retro 70s scrap some time ago and knew it wanted to be an apron and it FINALLY came to me--the person who would embrace it, I mean. And the fabric combo. Got to use a scrap of my Dick and Jane word-omatic scrap too for the pocket and some mini-ric rac I've been hoarding like a tiny squirrel with a tree:

Have you made an apron for somebody lately? It's a super satisfying 2-hour-ish undertaking that will make you happy to drive to the post office to send it off. (And THAT is saying something--especially from a postally-challenged person like me.) And I'll be thinking today about how happy my friend from Texas will be when she skips out to her mailbox and finds this there waiting for her. It will be a little chunk of love, delivered.

Craft Debt: Item #1. CHECK.

Craft Debt update.

Totally pulled off Item #1 (apron for last year's Man Son's teacher) during somebody's nap. It turned out nice and sweet and homey-looking--thanks to a nice bit of ric-rac. I used the A.C.'s classic vintage apron pattern, which I always have in my back pocket, and I love the look. It's totally cooking-in-the-farm-kitchen happy looking. (She picked the fabric from some swatches I gave her with some choices from my lovingly thrifted stash.)

Here's the ex-2nd grader holding it:

We totally delivered it about 42 seconds before the new school year started. Score.

One Something A Day: Weeks 2 & 3

I'm working on sticking to my make-something-a-day plan. Here's my latest makings . . .

8 Garden Aprons: 

 

3 Little Girl Dresses (out of a bedsheet, an old curtain and a linen tea towel):

 

One Matching Mini Apron:

 

And then the modeled shot:

I'm not sure I've got many more gardening aprons in me, but I can promise you that I have about thirty kabillion more baby dresses in me. It happened. No patterns for these--I was with my grandma and she was telling me she used to make them and convinced me that they were in the category of Easy Peasy. And then it was like baby-dress-making angels descended and I saw that the whole thing is just a bunch of TUBES. So I started sewing and didn't stop. 

 

About the TUBES idea. You literally only need one baby body measurement: the chest one. And this doesn't have to be with a tape. I did it with the yellow bedsheet fabric for the first run and then matched the others to it. Once you know how big to make that TUBE (sew the tube with the backside of the fabric facing out, flip it right-side out, leave it flat) then you can cut a big fat RECTANGLE that matches it for the body (I did some pleating and such for fun but you could skip it) then you make two MINI TUBES for straps, pin 'em in and then sew the thing up. 

 

I can already tell I'm going to write a PATTERNLESS BABY DRESS tutorial. That's for later.

One Something A Day: Week One.

So, I've decided to make one something every day. 

My buddy and I are planning on having a booth at a local craft fair next month, and if I'm going to have anything on the table, I've got to get to it. Right now when I look at my big fat thrifted stash of fabric, all I see is gardening aprons, so I've been pumping them out.

 

Monday:

(fabric: one state of Oklahoma tea towel, stash sea blue cotton, somebody's jeans)

 

Tuesday:

(fabric: one stash striped tea towel scrap, stash orange cotton with dandellion star, somebody's jeans)

Wednesday (swerved away from the gardening aprons and over to frankensteining some vintage placements)

(fabric: two 70's quilted spice placements, one ruffled brown placemat for pocket, stash brown cotton, brown ric rac)

Thursday (finally made a kiddo apron out of a vintage circus placemat I've had):

(fabric: one vintage cotton circus placemat, candy striped cotton, fat yellow bias trim, yellow ric rac)

 

Friday:

(fabric: one olive linen scrap,  the rest of that beautiful deep teal upholstery scrap, somebody's jeans)

Saturday:

It was 4th of July. I watched a parade, rode my bike a lot and ate a lot of tri tip. And saw fireworks. 

 

I'll keep you posted on Week 2 of One Something a Day. Promise.

Made One for Myself.

A gardening apron. Here are the action shots:

I have now lost my mind cutting off the loops of all the old jeans I'm using and adding LOOPS to everything. Dangit. When I say lost my mind I simply mean that if you entered my house right now wearing jeans, I would ask you to please take your pants off so that I could cut them up to use to make gardening aprons. I am otherwise perfectly sane. Though I do have three children, so there's that low marking on my sanity-ometer.

I liked the comment that Anne V. left on the last post with another good idea for loops too. I've got them here as tool loops--she's suggested them for actual belt loops for the ties (would not ever have occurred to me to use belt loops for belt loops--another ding on the sanity-ometer). 

Like I said last time, go make yourself one. I'm the happiest plant-waterer in my neighborhood.

Gardening Apron. You need one.

So I made this gardening apron for a sweet friend and it's turned out to be one of my favorite aprons ever. C'mon. How cute is it anyways? Yeesh.

It's, of course, made from just scraps, really. The main panel is from a seriously-old piece of oil-cloth-ish material I thrifted; the ties are still-yet more fabric from my re-do of the army parachute pants; and the pockets are off a pair of my son's blown-out jeans.

So I've put together a how-to so that everybody can share in the gardening apron good times. Just click over here: Easy Peasy Gardening Apron.

I've made a small stack of gardening aprons (like this one for my friend who really wants to be a flower farmer) from that wonderful book A is For Apron--which, if you don't already own or haven't checked out from the library yet, you really should. It's loads of fun. 

I've liked them, but found the pocket trickier than somebody just starting to sew would probably want to mess with. And I'm partial to the wrap-around-the-front tie. And also, I like to cut up and re-use clothes. So, this is my version. Kudos to the other one too. 

Plus--how fun is it to use old jeans? Especially in a way that maybe doesn't scream I USED OLD JEANS (which is always my beef about projects that use old jeans.) This little number is the perfect storm of Refashion and Scrap Use, my two favorite Sewing Categories.

Go make one, eh?

"Hot Food Hot Food"

Okay, so this apron is sort of vintage/mod. I'm loving this print that I found four kind of wide strips of while I was thrifting--and the main panel is orange linen (because who doesn't love orange linen--why didn't I ever wear an ORANGE LINEN easter dress? I think I would have been very happy as a child if this had happened to me. Alas, I was Holly Hobbyed-out.) The nifty part of this apron is the tomato red ric rac that runs across the bottom panel. Every last bit of this thing was treasure hunted at a thrift store. Yeehaw. This is how I roll. (Don't worry. I did Dorky Lady Fake Quotes when I said that.)

The bottom left panel says "HOT FOOD HOT FOOD. Because this is what I yell from the dinner table when I'm sitting there alone and I've already said "Dinner Time!" in a really Nice Mommy Voice about three times. When my kids are still staring at the ceiling and my husband has decided that changing all the lightbulbs in the house seems like a good idea and the lovely fill in the blank with whatever lovely thing I've made for dinner is getting cold, this is what I yell. 

This apron also opens the doors of my Etsy store, which is lovely news for me because I've been dying to get the thing going.

 

Here's another thrilling piece of dittily info: I put this apron together for the make-one-out-of-what-you-ve got apron making challenge over at Tie One On which is a place that I click over and over and again all the time to see when the next apron challenge is coming. Plus I want to be best friends with Amy Karol. But don't tell her. Akward.

Also, yes, I know that my camera is shooting the same quality photos that the box camera I made in 5th grade did when I took that snappy B & W photo of the school water fountain. I can't talk about it. Maybe I'll win the lottery. Yeesh.

Everyone should have an apron. Did I say that already?

"All My Lovin Comes From Jersey"

This full-length apron used to be a curtain. I didn't even take the old curtain stitching out of it because I didn't want to deal with the possibility of some annoying fade line. And the stitching was so nice and neat, done by such a good sew-er. (Sorry, I just can't write the word "seamstress" and, um, "sewer" seems all wrong.)

So I made the olive green linen into some mother-long pieces of bias and double top-stiched them for the mongo straps (so that they wrap around the back and tie in the front) and then stared and stared at the thing to figure out what to do to finish it. No matter what I did, it looked like, well, a curtain-turned-into-an-apron.

And then I just picked up my rotary cutter one day and made the curve at the bottom and added the black bias tape and then it became an actual APRON. It happened. 

It says "All my lovin comes from" and then JERSEY on the pocket because it's for my friend Amy and she's married to a New Jersey poet who's been transplanted to CA. It's for her bday and she's going to really like it. I can just tell.

(Here's the detail . . . which is possible because I have a life-changingly cool secretary's stamp set from 1950 that gives me the POWER to say whatever the heck I want to. )

I am all powerful.

Little Girl Aprons

For an activity (later, after we'd digested that really medium sauce) I made the little visiting girls aprons. They got to pick the fabric out of my big pile of thrifted fabric love.

(The pile:    )

The little girls really liked this idea. They helped where they could, and we came up with these, which I'm hoping they're wearing at home right now, flipping some pancakes.

They were so cute, I almost passed out--oh wait, no that wasn't me. That was their mom when I SEWED THROUGH MY FINGER making them. I so wish this were a lie. Don't worry: No Emergency 51 dudes came to save me or get my toe unstuck from the tub, I just did a Rambo-ish move to get the needle out and then ran down with some drama for a bandaid. 

I think the little girls liked these better because of the drama even. 

Thrifted Little Girl Drama Aprons.

His & Hers Aprons

So I went to the place where the bride-and-groom-to-be registered and they wanted aprons. Well, they're so not getting the crappy aprons they registered for. I mean, well, maybe they are--but I'm bringing THESE today! (All fabric either flat-out given to me by a relative who was storing it for thirty years in her barn-sized, well, storage barn or found at my favorite thrift shop. Tho, these babies also have some flea market finds--that hunting scene fabric used to be pillow covers and curtains, I think.)

It's my first shot at a his and hers solution to my addicted apron-giving. Score!

Here's the detail . . .

Gotta run or I'll miss the shower.