Capsule Wardrobe of extraordinarily pretty things - No. 1 : The apron

So as I mentioned in my previous post, the first thing on my list is going to be an apron. Not the sort that gets mucky in the kitchen, but the sort that you can wear over your day clothes almost as if it is part of them. The girls in Little Women would almost certainly have worn these on a daily basis as would any self respecting victorian young lady, so let’s see how a more modern version might look.

For the pattern, I chose the ‘Maria Apron’ by Maven patterns. I had seen these patterns at the festival of quilts last year and bookmarked the website when I got home. I saw straightway that there was a perfect pattern there and ordered it via etsy. It arrived swiftly and it is beautifully put together - a lovely instruction booklet and high quality paper for the pattern. One thing I really loved about the style of this pattern were the patch pockets (ping..embroidery…of course) and I liked the informal cross over style too, which was a bit of a Japanese twist. As I have stated before, I am a novice dressmaker, so I looked over everything carefully and also referenced the photo tutorials on the website which are excellent. I also saw on instagram that some people had made a reversible version with pretty fabric for one side and I liked this idea very much. One thing that always puts me off dressmaking are open exposed seams on things and especially as I don’t have an overlocker. So I thought I would be ambitious and go with the lined version (I am not sure I ever really thought about it being reversible). The other advantage of this was that I could also line my planned embroidered pockets. I decided upon my fabrics - a rusty coloured linen from the Essex yarn dyed collection of Robert Kaufman and a pretty ditsy little print for the lining.

After cutting out the pieces, I looked at embroidering the pockets first. One thing that is interesting in this pattern is that there is a ‘pocket former’ - you cut out a piece of card using this pattern and it is the finished shape of the pocket and you use it to press the edges of the pocket around, so that it forms the pretty shape with rounded edges. The advantage of this is that you can use this when thinking about your embroidery design. I cut out 2 squares of linen and marked around this with an erasable marker to give me the size of the pocket and then I used this also to make a plan of my embroidery. As the apron is otherwise going to be plain, it seemed to me that a mass of dense flowers on these lovely big pockets might be quite striking and so I piled in the blooms to give a really colourful effect. Take your embroidery design from whatever book or pattern you are using and enlarge it on the printer/photocopier to a size that will fit in your pocket outline using the ‘pocket former’ to get the placement right. Don’t forget that you might want to reverse the design by tracing for a second pocket. Print it out and/or trace your design on to stitch and tear paper or simply use the printer paper (the cheaper the better). Place the paper on the right side of your fabric and stitch the outline on your machine using the free motion foot. It can be a good idea to use the same colour threads as you plan to embroidery with.

Then you simply pull away the paper to reveal your design. Tweezers can be useful to get in-between stitches.

You are then ready to put the fabric in your hoop and start embroidering.

I used thread colours to match my lining fabric and simple chain stitch and french knots to work the design. A few little buttons from my Mum’s button box added the finishing touch. Once the pockets were embroidered, I cut out the pockets as per the instructions and was ready to start constructing my apron.

I have to say that it was really straight forward and the extra photo tutorials on Maven’s website were very handy. Adding the pretty lining gives it weight and helps the linen to hold up better. Adding the pockets was rather thrilling and after all that embroidering the whole thing hardly took a whisper to put together and it is just thoroughly adorable, super comfortable and exactly what I had in mind. It was a good place to start - no zips, darts, collars etc. and it has boosted my confidence for the next project. A little bit of hand work can make even the plainest of garments look charming and I have no hesitation in putting this into my wardrobe of ‘extraordinarily pretty things’.

See you soon for some more adventures in the sewing room.

Ruby x