another dress diary: green apron
Aug. 17th, 2008 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7As an aside, before I get into this: was talking to a Pennsic person and he said something like, You've only been with your boyfriend six years? Shit man, you barely know him, or something like that. And my first reaction was hey, six years is a long time, especially when you're not thirty yet, but then I came home and Z had cut ten inches off his ponytail so it's not quite long enough to stay in place now and it's all hanging in his face like Kurt Cobain, and now all of a sudden he's listening to Nirvana. So, uh, ok, fine, you were right, dude, I barely know this guy.
So anyway. On to the sewing diary.
This is my first plausibly non-SCAish garment, but unfortunately I couldn't find my camera so I don't have any photos of the process. (It was under a shirt. Yes, that's my filing system...)
However. The whole garment was based on a drawing I did of a garment of my sister's, which she got in a thrift store, and it's easy, easy as pie. So here, I'm doing a text-only diary. But I swear it's awesome. This is the best apron ever.
So at Pennsic this vendor was selling random fabric on clearance, 'make me an offer'. He had all this green 45" wide fabric, looked kinda like cotton. It was about thirteen yards. I bought it, plus a few scraps of other fabric, for fifteen bucks. I made a choli out of it at Pennsic, handsewing while I sat in the common area, and wore it to work my last day.
At home, I finally prewashed the rest of it. It bled everywhere, and faded a little. It's cheap, but it's pretty definitely cotton. And I have a ton of it, don't care, and can make experimental things out of it. This has been my problem so far-- I couldn't find anything cheap enough that I could make myself not care if I totally screwed it up. I have a hoarder's instincts, honed over generations, and it's hard for me to not care about objects.
So anyway.
Whenever the last time I was home was, or maybe the time before, I noticed this great apron Ann was wearing. I stole it and measured it and made sketches of it, and wrote myself notes.
What's so great about this apron?
It wraps all the way around. This means you can wipe your hands on your butt, which is something Ann and I both tend to do, even when we're wearing aprons that don't extend that far.
What it also means is that you can just not wear pants. I can't explain how great that is. I have this thing where I just don't find any of my pants attractive or comfortable for kicking around the house-- either they're too structured, and pinch my soft fat rolls after a while, or they're not structured enough and I just feel like a slob in them. Or they're too nice and I don't want to wear them just for kicking around. Or whatever.
So I go pantsless a lot.
Yes, I'm a slob. If you've been reading for longer than five minutes, you know that.
So this is the Glorious Apron of Pantslessness-Enabling.
Also it has pockets. Pockets are super handy. All the time.
The original, which was manufactured by "Meadowbank" of Stamford, Connecticut, was made up of three equal panels of cotton twill in a multi-colored vertical stripe. They were stitched together with a straight machine stitch, the seams flattened out and the edges bound with a serger, and then a self waistband was folded under, over, under again, and stitched down. (i.e., the raw edges were folded under, then the thing was folded in half and stitched down over all of it, so it was neat edges all around. Standard operating procedure, illustrated well here, scroll down to photos.) The panels were pleated into the waistband: in the center there was an inward-facing cartridge-pleat in the center, between the two pockets. Then the rest of the waistband was done in little knife pleats, not very deep, about an inch apart.
The two square patch pockets were cut on the diagonal of the fabric, so they had stripes running corner-to-corner instead of straight up and down. They had the edges folded down and stitched under, the top folded over and the edge serged, but left unstitched, and then were just sewed to the front of the apron.
The pockets were about 8" x 7 3/4". The apron's overall length from waistband to hem was 28".
So I decided to copy it, but for my slightly-larger ass. I miscalculated, of course; when you pleat fabric, it takes more of it to cover the same area. Whoops. So mine is in four panels. The pleating is woefully uneven; I left a part of it unpleated with the idea that it would be the side to go underneath at the back, and I'm more interested in that lying flat and behaving over my non-flat ass than in having yet another layer of foofy pleating.
My panels also are not equal. I was really lazy about measuring. The panels are each around 30" wide. But then, I don't have a serger, so I couldn't bind the edges: instead, I folded them under twice so no raw edges showed, and stitched them down, then sewed them together. So that ate a lot of fabric as well. My seams are bulky and I should go back and stitch the seams open, since they're so bulky, but I haven't yet. (It would have to be done by hand, I think-- it would show, and my machine-stitching is wobbly and crazy-looking.)
There's no seam down the front, because I added the fourth panel on one side and just made the waistband slightly-off-center, so there's an extra-swishy part at the back that goes over the flatter un-pleated part before tying off.
The original also had a diagonal buttonhole in the waistband, which I think the tie of the apron was meant to pass through so it could be secured. I may or may not add such a feature to mine. The cotton I used is lighter than the twill, so the waistband and pleats aren't so crisp.
One thing I did that's notable, I think, is that I cut the waistband, folded it in and ironed it, then laid it out on the table, right-side-up but front flipped up instead of folded into place. I then pinned the skirt, right-side-up, to the front of the back of the waistband. (This would make total sense if you just laid it out, I promise.) I got all the pleats just as I wanted them, pinned each pleat into place, sewed it all down and removed the pins. Then, and only then, I flipped the front of the waistband down into place, and sewed it down with one line of stitching. This means that the skirt is sewn on to the waistband twice, but you only see one clean line of stitching from the front.
I have not yet hemmed it; the bottom is the selvedge. I will hem it. I also haven't put the pockets on yet. I really want to embroider the tops of them, since my fabric is so plain. I need a very simple motif-- I have a book of charted Celtic patterns, but I actually think I would prefer a Baltic one. Latvian embroidery uses more straight lines-- the Celtic patterns are from engravings and manuscript illuminations, and so are religious and curvy. Latvians are much more interested in textile art-- at least, that's what the Russians have left them-- and so for the most part their motifs are actually suited to weaving or embroidering. Also, most of their motifs are agricultural, and very kitcheny-homey without being cutesy. (Sun symbols, wheat ears, corn stalks, lightning, earth symbols: more on them here.) So I'm going to look up a good repeating wheat-ear type pattern, and do it in shades of yellow and gold across the tops of the pockets.
Which is probably ensuring that I will never actually get pockets on this damn thing. But that's not keeping me from wearing it everywhere. I wore it last night to the roller derby bout, wearing it over my miniskirt and striped tights because I don't really like the attention I sometimes get if I wander around a strange city or highway rest stop in full derby regalia. And when all was over, I put it on in the parking lot, and stripped off my tights and skirt and all in the parking lot, and nobody was any the wiser. I drove home much more comfortable.
So I'll probably make myself more than one of these aprons, eventually. I really like it. And this fabric is so cheap that it'll eventually fade and be icky. Maybe I'll pick the pockets off if I like the embroidery, and re-use them when the apron falls apart. We'll see. I have to design them first, and actually do them...
One of these days I'll post a photo, but I should probably hem it first. At the moment it's ankle-length, which is a bit much for an apron.
Anyway, I'll post photos at some point. If anyone was looking to get into sewing, this is totally a great starter project because I don't think it's possible to screw it up notably. I probably used, hm, 45" wide fabric... I made the panels like 34" long, and the excess parts I trimmed off the top became the waistband and the self-fabric ties. So there was no waste, it's all squares. I'd say four yards of 45" wide fabric, or two yards of 60" fabric, and anything with a high cotton or linen content would do, up to and probably including denim or twill, and down to and including something so sheer it's almost gauze for a more floaty effect. Totally an unfussy project, a couple hours start to finish, and immediately useful.
So anyway. On to the sewing diary.
This is my first plausibly non-SCAish garment, but unfortunately I couldn't find my camera so I don't have any photos of the process. (It was under a shirt. Yes, that's my filing system...)
However. The whole garment was based on a drawing I did of a garment of my sister's, which she got in a thrift store, and it's easy, easy as pie. So here, I'm doing a text-only diary. But I swear it's awesome. This is the best apron ever.
So at Pennsic this vendor was selling random fabric on clearance, 'make me an offer'. He had all this green 45" wide fabric, looked kinda like cotton. It was about thirteen yards. I bought it, plus a few scraps of other fabric, for fifteen bucks. I made a choli out of it at Pennsic, handsewing while I sat in the common area, and wore it to work my last day.
At home, I finally prewashed the rest of it. It bled everywhere, and faded a little. It's cheap, but it's pretty definitely cotton. And I have a ton of it, don't care, and can make experimental things out of it. This has been my problem so far-- I couldn't find anything cheap enough that I could make myself not care if I totally screwed it up. I have a hoarder's instincts, honed over generations, and it's hard for me to not care about objects.
So anyway.
Whenever the last time I was home was, or maybe the time before, I noticed this great apron Ann was wearing. I stole it and measured it and made sketches of it, and wrote myself notes.
What's so great about this apron?
It wraps all the way around. This means you can wipe your hands on your butt, which is something Ann and I both tend to do, even when we're wearing aprons that don't extend that far.
What it also means is that you can just not wear pants. I can't explain how great that is. I have this thing where I just don't find any of my pants attractive or comfortable for kicking around the house-- either they're too structured, and pinch my soft fat rolls after a while, or they're not structured enough and I just feel like a slob in them. Or they're too nice and I don't want to wear them just for kicking around. Or whatever.
So I go pantsless a lot.
Yes, I'm a slob. If you've been reading for longer than five minutes, you know that.
So this is the Glorious Apron of Pantslessness-Enabling.
Also it has pockets. Pockets are super handy. All the time.
The original, which was manufactured by "Meadowbank" of Stamford, Connecticut, was made up of three equal panels of cotton twill in a multi-colored vertical stripe. They were stitched together with a straight machine stitch, the seams flattened out and the edges bound with a serger, and then a self waistband was folded under, over, under again, and stitched down. (i.e., the raw edges were folded under, then the thing was folded in half and stitched down over all of it, so it was neat edges all around. Standard operating procedure, illustrated well here, scroll down to photos.) The panels were pleated into the waistband: in the center there was an inward-facing cartridge-pleat in the center, between the two pockets. Then the rest of the waistband was done in little knife pleats, not very deep, about an inch apart.
The two square patch pockets were cut on the diagonal of the fabric, so they had stripes running corner-to-corner instead of straight up and down. They had the edges folded down and stitched under, the top folded over and the edge serged, but left unstitched, and then were just sewed to the front of the apron.
The pockets were about 8" x 7 3/4". The apron's overall length from waistband to hem was 28".
So I decided to copy it, but for my slightly-larger ass. I miscalculated, of course; when you pleat fabric, it takes more of it to cover the same area. Whoops. So mine is in four panels. The pleating is woefully uneven; I left a part of it unpleated with the idea that it would be the side to go underneath at the back, and I'm more interested in that lying flat and behaving over my non-flat ass than in having yet another layer of foofy pleating.
My panels also are not equal. I was really lazy about measuring. The panels are each around 30" wide. But then, I don't have a serger, so I couldn't bind the edges: instead, I folded them under twice so no raw edges showed, and stitched them down, then sewed them together. So that ate a lot of fabric as well. My seams are bulky and I should go back and stitch the seams open, since they're so bulky, but I haven't yet. (It would have to be done by hand, I think-- it would show, and my machine-stitching is wobbly and crazy-looking.)
There's no seam down the front, because I added the fourth panel on one side and just made the waistband slightly-off-center, so there's an extra-swishy part at the back that goes over the flatter un-pleated part before tying off.
The original also had a diagonal buttonhole in the waistband, which I think the tie of the apron was meant to pass through so it could be secured. I may or may not add such a feature to mine. The cotton I used is lighter than the twill, so the waistband and pleats aren't so crisp.
One thing I did that's notable, I think, is that I cut the waistband, folded it in and ironed it, then laid it out on the table, right-side-up but front flipped up instead of folded into place. I then pinned the skirt, right-side-up, to the front of the back of the waistband. (This would make total sense if you just laid it out, I promise.) I got all the pleats just as I wanted them, pinned each pleat into place, sewed it all down and removed the pins. Then, and only then, I flipped the front of the waistband down into place, and sewed it down with one line of stitching. This means that the skirt is sewn on to the waistband twice, but you only see one clean line of stitching from the front.
I have not yet hemmed it; the bottom is the selvedge. I will hem it. I also haven't put the pockets on yet. I really want to embroider the tops of them, since my fabric is so plain. I need a very simple motif-- I have a book of charted Celtic patterns, but I actually think I would prefer a Baltic one. Latvian embroidery uses more straight lines-- the Celtic patterns are from engravings and manuscript illuminations, and so are religious and curvy. Latvians are much more interested in textile art-- at least, that's what the Russians have left them-- and so for the most part their motifs are actually suited to weaving or embroidering. Also, most of their motifs are agricultural, and very kitcheny-homey without being cutesy. (Sun symbols, wheat ears, corn stalks, lightning, earth symbols: more on them here.) So I'm going to look up a good repeating wheat-ear type pattern, and do it in shades of yellow and gold across the tops of the pockets.
Which is probably ensuring that I will never actually get pockets on this damn thing. But that's not keeping me from wearing it everywhere. I wore it last night to the roller derby bout, wearing it over my miniskirt and striped tights because I don't really like the attention I sometimes get if I wander around a strange city or highway rest stop in full derby regalia. And when all was over, I put it on in the parking lot, and stripped off my tights and skirt and all in the parking lot, and nobody was any the wiser. I drove home much more comfortable.
So I'll probably make myself more than one of these aprons, eventually. I really like it. And this fabric is so cheap that it'll eventually fade and be icky. Maybe I'll pick the pockets off if I like the embroidery, and re-use them when the apron falls apart. We'll see. I have to design them first, and actually do them...
One of these days I'll post a photo, but I should probably hem it first. At the moment it's ankle-length, which is a bit much for an apron.
Anyway, I'll post photos at some point. If anyone was looking to get into sewing, this is totally a great starter project because I don't think it's possible to screw it up notably. I probably used, hm, 45" wide fabric... I made the panels like 34" long, and the excess parts I trimmed off the top became the waistband and the self-fabric ties. So there was no waste, it's all squares. I'd say four yards of 45" wide fabric, or two yards of 60" fabric, and anything with a high cotton or linen content would do, up to and probably including denim or twill, and down to and including something so sheer it's almost gauze for a more floaty effect. Totally an unfussy project, a couple hours start to finish, and immediately useful.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-08-17 05:41 pm (UTC)You make it seem as though there wasn't a logical thought process…
…and now you've got Unplugged on the hifi all '94 style and you're trying to pin it on me.
-Zno subject
Date: 2008-08-18 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 01:44 am (UTC)This is an apron I like the looks of, though I don't have the pattern for it. I figured it would fall into the 'too nice' category, and I don't have anything for it to go with.
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/8836/apronpatternspoppypinafjz7.jpg
no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 01:48 am (UTC)I haven't actually worn this new apron cooking at all. I'm doing OK with it because it was so simple, because it's cheap fabric, and because I'm really just using it as a housedress anyway. (I love sitting around the house in it.)
Embroidering the pockets is probably too much, but I'm putting the embroidery on separate bits of fabric I'm going to stitch on, so that if the apron gets too grody I can pick the embroidery off and save it and re-use it. That's the idea, anyway. Otherwise I know it would go into the "too nice to wear" pile. I have a big pile now that was "too nice to wear" and now is the "doesn't fit", so I'm trying to be better about just wearing things that really fit me, now. I'm worst with bras, though. I have to learn to make those...
no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 01:52 am (UTC)The Latvian symbols are kick-ass. I cribbed a bunch off Easter eggs from years past, which I have photos of-- we got the patterns for those from some ancient booklets that Z's mom, as a Latvian, has in her house. But they're not really suited to cross-stitch so much as to regular embroidery, which I don't know much about, so I may need to go find a book on real embroidery...
Anyway, I really like Baltic stuff because it's every bit as cool as Celtic, but the New Agey types haven't discovered it so it's not trendy. Secretly I'm just like an indie hipster only with folk art.
Anyway it strikes me as somehow wrong to take a pattern from a sacred text like the Book of Kells and... embroider it on an apron. Shouldn't I pick, instead, a Latvian symbol relating to good luck and prosperity, cribbed from a set of mittens, and put it onto my apron? The original meanings for the Latvian symbols, in addition, are actually attested, unlike all the Secret Meanings of Ye Kelticke Knots What We Made Up In 1960 While Stoned And Looking At Xeroxes Of Ye Booke Of Durrow And Now My Biker-Chick Wife Has It Tattooed On Her Ass. Mm.
(I am only so bitter because I really love Celtic manuscript illuminations, but have to reluctantly admit that they're a bit... overplayed at the moment.)
no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 03:52 am (UTC)I agree new agey celtic stuff is overplayed- but that being said I do also love celtic stuff, so I feel your pain. So far, I've refrained from tattoos, listened to Altan, held back on the jewelry but gotten into the cooking. I like some common irish stuff (whiskey, I think it goes in anything) and not so common (seaweed).
Er, but what was my point? Ah yes, one of the things The Masses haven't gotten their mitts into so far as I know is the Aran style knitting symbols. My sister is much more a knitter then I am, I lose patience with sweaters, but, she was looking into some Aran stuff and I guess all those little patterns that look just like little knobbles and bumps have meaning. The way you put them together spells out a kind of message about yourself- marital status, what your job is, and some extra little things you can put in that would kind of fit more into 'personality'.
I guess the idea is two people stomping out around the bogs who've never met each other before could look at each other's sweaters and be able to see what that person did, how many kids they had, that kind of thing. And of course some clans preferred certain styles, maybe you could tell something about who they were related to. Heh, plus I'd imagine it would put a cramp in the style of someone blowing through a strange town while traveling and trying to pick up chicks in the 'family man' sweaters his wife knit. Which I'm sure was a huge coincidence.
Always thought that was kind of neat though.