From old comes new

This is an old apron my mother-in-law made for me several years ago. I love the style of it (with a front and back and no ties), my grandmother always wore this style of apron. So I associate it with garlic-studded roasts, roasted potatoes, and ravioli.

Poor ripped apron

So, I wore this apron a lot. Enough for the white pocket edge to get very stained, and for the left side to also get very stained—you can kind of see it in the picture, but this print hides stains quite nicely.

So, I wore it a lot. But it was a little big for me, and I finally caught one of the elastic sides on a doorknob, and...well, you can see the rip.

I washed the apron and put it into my scrap bag, because an apron doesn't really work for cooking with a big hole. And, I have made and received a few aprons since, but none have pockets. Before we got chickens, I didn't care too much about pockets on aprons. But now I have eggs to collect, and sometimes there are 6, which don't fit into jacket pockets or my hands. And isn't this chicken print perfect for an egg apron?

Enter the pattern Granny's Clothespin Apron fro the book One-Yard Wonders. I did not have an actual full yard from the old apron, but I can make this work, right?

Well, kind of. As usual, I managed to pick the one pattern from the book that actually has tons of errata–a link to which I found on Flickr after fighting through the pattern. Howeverm if I had known about the errata I would have been sure I didn't have enough fabric, so perhaps it worked out for the best.

Finished!

It's not clear from the picture, but the apron has one large pocket across the front, with curved sides—they can faintly be seen in the photo above. I ended up cutting only 2 ties pieces (vs 4), and using those elastic sides because my ties were not as long as called for.  I muddles through the side binding (very poorly written)—and the errata involve those side bindings, the waistband, and the ties. Of course. In the end, my ties wrap around and tie in the front, even though they are still short per the pattern. And I only needed the 2 tie pieces because the waistband as written was half size—so I actually made it work perfectly. Accidentally.

But it fits just fine and can easily hold 6 eggs. It could probably hold 36 eggs!

It fits!

 The length of this apron is about equal to the width of the old one. I managed to get the large piece out of the back, and the large front pocket out of the front of the old apron (working around the hole, after ripping off the pocket (which resulted in one small hole to avoid). The ties came from the pocket and a leftover piece of the back, and the bias cut facings came from the back and front. And I even have a few scraps of chicken print left.

I will probably also use this apron while gardening—I have already used it when cleaning the coop, because I always get covered in wood shavings. This helped a lot.

Linked to:  Sew Darn Crafty
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