Birthday Apron

Never in a million years did I imagine myself saying this, but I think I like to embroider. The last time I was forced into it was probably when I was 10 or so. My mom wanted me to embroider something to enter in the Broome County fair (we were in a horse-oriented 4-H club), and alloted a painful 15 minutes per day to be set aside for this exercise. I hated it. It was torture. By the time we reached the french knots section, she'd taken over, and I probably got a blue or red ribbon for her embroidery skills.

Last week I drew an elephant on cloth, though, and embroidered it on Annika's birthday gift. AND I LIKED IT! Weird. I called my mom to figure out how to do an outline stitch, and then because I was too thick to understand her instructions over the phone, I had to look up stem stitch instructions on the internet (bless the blasted internet). Now that I know that Hell does indeed freeze and I enjoy embroidery, I'm going to unpack those baby onesies I bought, with good intent but little resolve, to embroider 2 years ago.



Everyone needs my mother. The apron cost me nothing to make because she gave me bias tape and ric-rac from her garage sale stores, along with embroidery floss and little red buttons. (The red fabric is from a brilliant sheet I put on our wedding registry at Walmart and then sucked into a vacuum cleaner two years later. Since then, I've recovered the rocking chair cushions with it, hung a red-stripped closet cover, and made a few cloth tea bags for the girls.)

So now I've made my first item of clothing ever! (I don't count the straight seams on polyester skirts my mom finished for me in high school and college...) I'd planned to use a pattern, but the vintage pattern I had for a wraparound cobbler apron was in a size 8/10, so it wasn't much help. I spent a good day cutting cloth, sputtering, and draping red on Annika, snipping, shaping, and resizing. I began it on Thursday afternoon, and a grumpy sewing machine wasted Saturday, but it was finished on Monday, and Annie wore it one day late from a procrastinating mama. I love it, even though it's not exactly what I'd envisioned.

The three-pocketed front.



The wraparound back.



The tiger in our bathroom. Roar.