Putting On The Ritz Aprons!

these are the two aprons that i made for the Abbotsford Sewing and Crafts Show. the challenge was sponsored by the Association of Sewing and Design Professionals, and the theme was, as the title of this post indicates, Putting on the Ritz.

i started planning my first apron pretty early on, because i knew it was going to be incredibly time consuming to make. i was inspired by my friend Louise and the amazing things she creates out of silk, and a recent birthday gift that i made with purple silk (that i haven't posted - i should do that soon!), and decided that i wanted to make the apron out of silk dupioni.



and black lace ruffles. lots and lots of black lace ruffles! and covered buttons, because i love them, and handmade fuchsia lame piping, which i didn't love making as much, but i loved the end result.



i started on the ruffles first, and using my fabulous ruffle foot, made a whole lot of black lace trim. i did the math afterwards, and i think i used about 50 YARDS of lace. yes, that's 5-0 yards! each row took about 300", and there are 6 rows, so that's 1800"... it was a lot of ruffling!



i sewed the ruffles on in rows to the underskirt fabric, which was a polyester crepe that matched the silk perfectly. i didn't want to mark the rows visibly on the good side of the fabric, because this apron isn't exactly wash and wear, so i marked them on the backside and basted along them so that i'd have guides on the front side.



after i'd sewed the ruffles on, i assembled the underskirt, making it into a bubble skirt with all of the seams enclosed.

the overskirt is black dupioni silk, a loooong rectangle with curved ends. i made bias piping out of fuchsia lame fabric and sewed it along the sides and bottom of the silk. as i was making it, i was wondering whatever possessed me to do it, but it's really that extra touch of glitz. after the skirt was assembled, i went back and hand stitched little gathers along the skirt to show off the underskirt, and sewed small covered buttons on each spot.

the waistband is fuchsia dupioni, with extra long ties at the back. i love long ties on aprons.



the bib of the apron is black dupioni, trimmed with the lame piping. the neck strap is sewn on, with larger fuchsia dupioni covered buttons.



so that was my amazing, super time consuming but totally worth it apron.

the second apron wasn't nearly as cool!



i had this idea about draping and bias, but totally ran out of time to really experiment until it worked the way i envisioned it.

i was a bit concerned that my definition of putting on the ritz would be a little too gothic lolita for the judges, so i wanted to go with something a little more traditional. sequins!!


since one of the judging criteria was use of colour, i also wanted to get away from black, and use a colour other than pink, so i decided to go with purple. funnily enough, a lot of people thought the silk apron was black and purple anyway!



i bought a purple sequined mesh fabric, and a sueded satin in the same tone. i started out sewing them together as a square, and then cut off one corner for the bodice/bib of the apron. i cut 5" off the remainder of the square, leaving me with the opposite corner of the square for the skirt. in hindsight, i shouldn't have bothered cutting those 5" off, it would have added a bit more fullness in the skirt if i'd left them on.


(this photo is probably the most accurate colour-wise)

i sewed a waistband inbetween, and threaded a piece of purple ribbon through the waistband to gather it a bit. since the outer fabric is a mesh, i couldn't use white or black elastic that would be visible.



before i sewed everything together, i reinforced the grommet points with an extra layer of the backing fabric adhered with wonder under. as with the elastic, interfacing would have been visible.

i'm not happy with the grommets on the bib, they turned out a bit warped because i'm just not strong enough to set them with one or two hammer strikes. luckily, that's not very visible! and the ones on the waistband, that are more visible, worked much better.



instead of making waist ties and a neck strap, i made two long straps out of the satin. they go through the grommets on the bib and are held in place with knots, then crisscross across the back to go through the waistband grommets.



i'm really happy with the colour of the grommets though! i tried a few different things, and the purple staZon ink matched the colour the best. the alcohol inks looked really cool, but weren't the right shade of purple.





so those were my two entries. and now that they're done, i can move onto the next apron on my list - but first i need to recover from the show itself!

garlands garlands garlands!

wow, where did the last month go? we often say that time flies, or that time goes by very quickly, but honestly, this year has REALLY flown by!

i have great admiration for folks who can blog regularly, and folks who read blogs regularly, but i don't know how they do it - i can't even update my own blog regularly, much less keep up with others!

i've been working on lots of things the last little while, and kept intending to blog about them... that obviously didn't happen!!

i've been really overwhelmed lately, and felt like i had too many projects on the go, and that i was working on little bits and pieces without actually finishing anything.

some of the bits and pieces i've been working on were garlands, because i LOVE garlands, and they've been a good low key stress reliever type craft to work on periodically. i had a grand plan to post a different garland every day for a week - but now xmas is less than a week away, and most people are probably more organized than me, and actually have all of their decorating completed already.

i thought i'd post them all anyway, because they were fun to do, and i quite like them. maybe i'll repost them again next year, earlier!

the first bunch of garlands that i made were these snowball garlands. i found bags of small styrofoam balls covered in the iridescent clear glitter at the dollar store, and fell in love. i decided to pick up colours from the iridescence with beads, and string them into garlands. i still have a TON of the snowballs left - i think i need to make some garlands with no beads, just snowballs!









then i made super quick and cute ribbon using my much-loved ruffler foot, and spools of chiffon ribbon from the same dollar store. i like the turquoise one better - i think the fuchsia ribbon is a bit too wide.... the fun thing about these garlands is that if you don't want to use them for your tree next year, you can use them for your next sewing project!





i also made a few strands of card garlands, the same ones that everyone does cause they're so easy and cute. punch out the circles with a paper punch, and then use stickers to adhere them to your string. easy-peasy! i've seen them made with recycled xmas cards, and that's lovely, but i really wanted mine to be more cohesive, so i bought a half full pack of christmas cards from a thrift store, and punched all my circles and ovals from them.



and then i started playing with measuring tapes. i loooove measuring tapes.. i wish they came in more exciting colours, but i can't really complain when i only paid $1 for 4 of them! i learned the hard way a few years ago that the super cheap measuring tapes aren't actually accurate, which is so bizarre, but that just means you don't have to feel bad about cutting them up to make them into other things!

first i made a chain



i sewed the ends together on my sewing machine, using a teflon foot, since measuring tapes are plastic coated.



i used 3 measuring tapes to make a garland that measures about 70".



i cut the blue pieces about 7" long, and i don't think i would cut them any shorter than that. i tried cutting a yellow tape into smaller pieces, and the chains didn't hang as nicely, and they looked a little off.

so i chopped them into smaller pieces, and played around with that idea.



i sewed through them with bright blue thread, again with the teflon foot.



it gets tangled super easily, but the left over spools from the ruffled ribbon garland work perfectly for storage!



i played with a black and white tape as well - the result isn't as christmasy, but it would definitely look fun hanging in your studio year round!





sooo... those were my garlands. i had a few others that i was going to do as well, but garlands were pretty low on my priority list. the only reason i managed to get this much completed was because i started them super early, before i realized how much i had on my plate!

whew... lots of WIPS and little things!

lately i've been feeling like i'm having a hard time getting stuff accomplished. i'm flittering back and forth between projects, with not enough energy to finish all of them entirely. the past few weeks have been very busy, and though i don't often talk about it here (i completely missed blogging against disabelism day this year!), healthwise it's been a rough few months. i said last week that i was feeling discombobulated, and i think that's a very good word for me lately!

but there are some really exciting things happening! one i think is supposed to be hush-hush, and i'm cool with that in a don't-count-your-chickens-before-they're-hatched kind of way. i don't want to jinx anything!

the other two i can totally tell you about, but i'm going to save them for separate posts, just cause they're THAT cool, and cause i have lots of pictures to go along with them!


however, i do have lots of little odds and ends to show you and catch you up on!


i've been sending lots of letters, fun little ones.


like these accordion style playing card letters...




funky letters typed out on vintage ledger pages


letters with random sewing added as detail






and letters with fun envelopes, like these ones - they're security envelopes turned inside out and glued back together again.



i made myself a fancy hairclip to wear to a friend's grad, and altered a dress to go along with it.


i love the ruffle i added when i shortened it! (cause i'm really really short...)

i'm making myself a workbench for my drill press

(and not to be all conceited or anything, but the pictures i took of myself sawing turned out pretty damn hot... there are more in this folder!)

i'm totally appreciating the little movie clips that friends have made, while mentally planning one myself (i'll probably never get around to it!!)
an awesome one about trans "allies" that aren't really allies
(and totally check out bearabouttown's other amazing videos about stuff like access, ableism, and "women's spaces"


and an awesome one about personal space, consent, and the right to say no and be heard


i've been working on zine stuff and a baby quilt, making myself a few skirts (LOVING my ruffle foot lately!!), housesitting for my parents and trying to sort fabric while i was there, making curtains for my living room, and i'm working on an embroidery project which will never end, and planning so many more....



that sounds like a lot, doesn't it? it's really just because i haven't updated in so long, it sounds like a lot when you smush them all together into one post! plus, a bunch of them are still WIPs - one day i'll finish something.