A Gathering Apron

I am part of an amazing group of ladies who meets once a month and back in March, we drew names for an apron swap.  As soon as I drew the name of who I was going to sew an apron for,  I knew exactly what I was going to make for her.   I remembered that I had stumbled upon a tutorial for a gathering apron at The Cottage at Frog Creek during some late-night blog browsing and it was just perfect for my friend!  She is an organic farmer and also has over 100 chickens that she raises that lay the most beautiful eggs that I have ever seen.

The apron came together very quickly and I was given the opportunity to practice my button hole making skills....there are 4 botton holes along the bottom of the skirt.   

I chose a darker fabric that would hide stains and usage, because I wanted her use this apron, not keep it hanging up in her kitchen. 

To gather the skirt up, you simply thread the ribbon through the botton holes along the hem of the skirt, pull up the fabric and then tie the ribbon.  This holds the skirt in place and creates a large pocket to collect produce from your garden or fresh eggs.....well, anything that you want to collect really. ;-)

The only change that I made was that I used red, dot fabric for the lining.  The tutorial uses muslin.  The only reason why I made this change is because I bought the wrong width of muslin and I didn't have time to run to the fabric store to buy more.  Luckily, I had a large enough piece of fabric that matched in my stash!  I'm actually really glad that this happened, because I love having the lining red. :-)

Here is the matching tag that I made to go on the gift bag~

This was the first thing that I have sewn for quiet awhile!  Having a new baby has really cut into my sewing time.  It's a lot easier for me to work on my art journal right now, because I can leave everything out in my studio and work on it throughout the day.  I can't do that with a sewing project, because I sew at our dinner table.  It sure did feel good to be sewing again though!  I didn't realize how much I'd been missing it.  :-)

I'm finishing up a journal page about the Joplin tornado today and I will share it soon.....

Happy Friday everyone and I hope you have time to be creative today!

God Bless!

di