First and foremost, make sure no guest steps on the cute house bunny. I know, Lala should be in his cage with some yummy veggies to eat when there are guest. But the guests let Lala out. Have plenty of party treats. For the book club, make sure to have wine and the discussion questions. Also, shouldn’t every hostess have an adorable apron?
I probably shouldn’t even have bought this pattern to begin with. But when I came across an E-bay listing for 20 vintage apron patterns, all reasoning went out the window. Flipping through the lot, this one caught my eye. It was totally adorable. This is the one I have to make this year for white elephant for work.
The only gingham that was at my local fabric store at the time was a pearly polyester. Not exactly what I wanted (I wanted a cotton), but it will work. Really, unless the receiver reads this blog, I doubt they will know I had wanted cotton instead of polyester or that the apron is even made out of polyester.
I have never done smocking before. I went and checked my trusty Vogue Sewing manual and it didn’t have anything in it either. I probably should have checked some of my older sewing manuals, but didn’t feel like it. So, I tried just following the instructions in the pattern. It was a little tricky working off of figures only. I had this feeling like I was missing something and whatever I was doing was wrong. I found a honeycomb smocking tutorial video on the internet. I will include a link to the video at the end of the blog post. Using that and my instructions, I started again.
There are 15 rows of smocking on view A of this apron (half apron). Be careful. I missed the part on row 4 to skip a row of white squares, so I had to go back and remove the 5 smocking stitches I made. After getting the hang of what I was doing with the smocking, the overall chart became much easier to read. It took me about 3 rows to really get the hang of smocking before this happened. Looking at the chart, I think I missed a couple of stitches in those first 3 rows.
So I wouldn’t have to bias trim the pocket, I cut a second pocket piece as a lining. The two pocket pieces were sewn together and then attached to the apron. Instead of self-bias trim all around the edge, I decided to just purchase bias packets from the store. It makes it faster to put together. I am very slow at making bias trim.
To be completely honest, I am not certain why McCall’s hasn’t reprinted or used this pattern as an inspiration for a new apron pattern. Maybe they did and I haven’t been sewing long enough to know better. The pattern envelope is really cute, including the sixties hairstyles. I know that all the details in the smocking means that it doesn’t go together quickly. But is time it takes to make something up even considered? All the handwork details are what makes this apron really special. I don’t want to make something for a gift that one can go to a store and get practically the identical item.
Hopefully whoever gets this in the white elephant will enjoy his or her new apron.
Smocking tutorial used:
http://thehandmadedress.blogspot.com/2011/09/honeycomb-smocking-tutorial.html
sewbeading 