Gathering Apron and a Little Catching Up

I know I've been missing in action for a while now.  It has been a busy time here.  The whole month of February was full of sickness.  February is behind us now, and spring is on it's way so here's to better things to come!

We've have had several birthdays around here, Pooh Bear is three now, Sweet Cheeks is five, and my daughter and myself are a year older as well, but I won't give out the digits on those two.

My daughter has been wanting a gathering apron for quite a while now, ever since she saw the one here.  Quinn, from Reformation Acres, did a lovely job of showing and telling just how to make one, but I generally work from a pattern so I wasn't very confident about trying it out.  To be honest, I don't really trust myself much when it comes to measuring.  However, I knew it would tickle my daughter to have one made from that very tutorial so not long after she told me about it I bought this piece of Mary Jane's Farmgirl fabric.  I just knew I had to work it in some way. It took me a while to find just the right fabric to use with it, and to get my courage up to try it without a paper pattern.  I finally decided this birthday was just the occasion to get my gumption up and do it.

I chose to use this square for a pocket.  I'm sorry for the wrinkles and poor picture, but you get the idea.

Nice roomy pocket

It really wasn't hard to follow the tutorial, like I said it was written clearly, and the pictures documented the steps nicely.  The only real problem I had was my button holer wasn't cooperating.  It made a nice little mess that took me forever to pick out, and when I finished I decided I would work them by hand rather than go through that again.  Other than that it came together pretty smoothly.

The apron is so neat because it can be worn as a regular apron when the skirt is down, or you can use the ribbon at the waist and run it through a series of button holes at the bottom of the skirt to scoop the whole skirt up into a gigantic pocket to gather produce.

Okay, so where are those seeds?  It's time to plant something so we can fill this baby up!

If you think you would like to make one for yourself you should check out Quinn's tutorial.  If I can do it I'm sure you can!