The Pinspiration Apron

After my last post, I started looking through Pinterest for photos of other people's Pretty Ditty Apron, which lead to a general apron search, naturally.  It's really incredible how many different types and styles of aprons as out there.  There's everything form the simple to the completely impractical but oh so fancy and gorgeous.  It seems I am not the only who is moderately obsessed with loves aprons.  That's actually surprising as I don't know a single person in real life, other than myself, who wears aprons at all, let alone routinely and nice ones.

At any rate, one of those searched brought up a very simple yet cute and girly apron that I immediately loved.  The pin was from an Etsy shop that sells the completed apron, but that was OK, I could make it from scratch.  And so I drove to Joann, searched for similar fabric, came home and got to work.  The fabric I chose is not the exact fabric used in the pin but it is the same sort of theme, vintage/antique France with a romantic feel, and it is home dec weight, which makes it pretty sturdy.  I wasn't copying the pin, just making an apron inspired by it.  I actually love the fabric, I am a self professed Francophile and, as we've established, I love everything vintage and antique.

The shape of the apron is extremely simple and construction, which included drafting the pattern and figuring out everything as I went, took about three hours.  The ruffles here, which are did not photograph well and are actually a dusty rose color, were the second try.  Come think of it, the whole apron has as dusty rose/mauve tone that did not photograph well.  The first ruffle was a white bridal poly organza type fabric. I didn't buy enough for the ruffles to go all the way around the hem without having to piece it together (which I didn't want to do), so I looked in my stash and found this poly chiffon.  In the end, I think the dusty rose chiffon worked much better and goes much better with the overall color of the fabric so it was a happy accident.

The flower is very simple. There is a flat layer of apron fabric and a flat layer of chiffon, there there are four pieces of the chiffon fabric folded to make the petals.  Everything is sown together at the center, then I added a button, hot-glued everything to a small wool felt round and attached a pin. So the flower is removable and can be worn as an accessory with other outfits.

I love this apron. It encompasses many of my favorite things: France, antiques, ruffles, flowers, bicycles, and of course, aprons. 

I have another apron in the planning stages, let's see how it turns out.