Ciao beautiful friends-who-do-needlework!
I'm really happy to share this week with you, on our beloved #needleworkmonday, another garment I completed: an apron-dress, which is a kind of working dress that I can use at home or around the garden, to potter in. It is constructed from various scraps and a favourite-but-too-small black silk apron.
As I sometimes do, I began documenting the apron-dress once I was already a few steps in... I tend to pick up most of my projects very spontaneously, as I really believe in listening to the Flow-Of-All-Things, and to my place in the middle of them!
So I had already pinned the black apron to the cut children's sheet, and was cutting the bodice of the new apron-dress out of a vintage underwear set....
My iron rarely comes out, but here it was, helping me align the edges for hemming - I've done a lot of hems without ironing them precisely first, and ironing definitely makes everything neater!
My basic idea, which I'd been feeling into for a few weeks, was to have a front in the black apron with a white decorative bib, then to fill the back with a fuller - white - skirt to complete the skirt, and elasticated waist also with a zip, and some kind of a strap detail to support the bib sitting up against the chest.
I reused the black silk part almost in its entirety: I just snipped off the tiny waist strap, and used it - and its two gorgeous wee buttons - for the back strap.
These are stream-of-consciousness kind of photos! They don't show all the steps, but were taken as I had time to gather my thoughts, between intensive sewing action!
As you may be able to see in the snaps, I used the machine for most of the sewing along the edges of the black silk; the silk was VERY DELICATE, and needed reinforced at the edges where it had ripped.
In the above shot, you can see the exquisite frilled pockets, which were a feature of the black apron that I wanted most to have on my new apron-dress.
This is one of several very vintage underwear garments that I've gleaned over the years from the local markets. It had a full bodice, but I cut the sides and edges and straps from it, to make this bib.
And these are the afore-mentioned buttons and strap for the back of the apron-dress.
The sides of the bib were a bit wibbly-wobbly, and so I hemmed them (vertically) and then put a strip of (very vintage also!) elastic in, to tighten the edge a little.
I've always loved old things, probably because they are invariably:
- more beautiful
- more functional
- longer lasting
- break less easily
- nicer to use
It blows my mind, how we have been lured over the years into accepting shorter and shorter guarantees, and into having things last for less and less time as functional objects... This elastic was from my GRANDMOTHER'S sewing box. She died a couple of decades ago, and hadn't sewn for decades herself - these elastics are from MINIMUM 50 + years ago. Rubber elastics are usually increasingly inferior quality, as the years pass. I hate to buy new elastic! I am more often buying secondhand things to re-use the elastic!
I used a wee safety-pin, to lead the elastic through the hem.
Then sewed by hand, to attach the ends of the elastic to the bodice. I sewed with the dress hanging up, which is sometimes a nicer way to sew certain parts of a garment.
I tried to keep the contrasting threads to the back of the garment, where they wouldn't be seen (but let them sit outside where the bodice attaches to the skirt).
The snap below is of the mostly-put-together garment. I love the shape of it, and the contrast of the black and white.
The bodice was still quite clunky at this point: I hand-sewed the straps on, and adjusted their tension a bit, at the end.
Parts of the new apron-dress are quite heavy looking, and not as neatly tailored as I want them to be. I always feel a tad disappointed when I put on a new dress, as it invariably needs tweaking - but this is part of life and Art.!!
Ultimately, it sits well: I still have to think some more about possible underlayering, to reinforce the skirts: I have another black silk apron, well-used in my painting studio, which might function well as an underskirt for the front part - then I can easily find some thin white cotton from another crib sheet, if I look for one at the market.
The zip turned out fairly nice and neat. I chose a black zip in the end, and shortened it from a longer one. I used reinforcing of another layer of fabric on either side of the zip section, so as not to create too much tension between zip and silk, when it's opening and closing.
I may add another horizontal strap to this section of the bodice, to balance the whole garment better... just musing over what kind of thickness to make it, and how it'll maybe sit just right inside of the black strap loop on the back of the top...
Just another wee close-up of the back strap, as I was planning how to attach it to the top and the bottom of the elastic waistband... and eventually completed it whilst chatting to a visitor, improvisedly picking up this piece of the old straps from the undergarment, and making it into a kind of horizontal belt buckle slot.
All that was left at the end, was to cut out a lot of the - here, red - tacking thread. That is a lovely job to do, after a lot of efforts to get things neat and tidy and functioning: like cleaning up the kitchen after a baking session :-D
I am really happy with this project: I'm SUCH a long way from mastery, and each project completed makes me see more and more how much I have still to learn, but I'm beginning to feel the power in my hands and coordination, of how the mastery WILL eventually be attained! Looking VERY MUCH forward to my travels later this week, when I'll be on lengthy train journeys, and will be sewing all the way!
My favourite kind of sewing: travel sewing!
