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A Splashy Garden Apron

I have approximately nine projects going right now, which should shock pretty much no one anymore. In this case, half of them were meant to be fast projects, which of course means I immediately came up with ways to make them take more time.

Two large, draped pieces of fabric, one with large Hawaiian-print style flowers and leaves in two shades of green, turquoise, and grey, and the other light lime-green with small, densely scatted gold dots.
I found a way to get gold foiled fabric into my life.
I got these fabrics on a whim, because they were on clearance and cost me something like $8.16 total, and I'd been thinking I wanted to get some canvas for a garden apron before harvest season really got going. And they matched. And I am a champion justifier-of-purchases.

A photo from above of a colonial-blue cooking apron, folded in half vertically and laid on top of a back-folded piece of spashy green, teal, and grey tropical flower print fabric. The folded edges of the apron and fabric are aligned at left, and the apron straps coil and trail across the fabric past the back-turned edge. Bright sunlight dapples everything.
Me, have a limited palette? Nooooo.
I knew I wanted to make a Japanese-style apron, with crossed straps that just sling over opposite shoulders, so there's nothing to tie or untie. But...I've never made one, nor seen one up close. I spent some quality time lying on the couch, contemplating the backs of my eyelids while I tried to follow the path of the theoretical straps with my hands, working out how everything needed to be arranged for minimal seaming and good fit.

And then I grabbed my cooking apron and started drawing on fabric!

A close up of the bib of a colonial-blue cooking apron, with neck strap arranged neatly pointing upward and long straps vanishing out of frame to the right. A faint pen line arcs up the faintly patterned back of the green, turquoise, and grey tropical floral fabric from the right edge of the apron bib, separating from the edge of the bib as it curves upward, ending even with the top edge but about an inch further to the right.
I promise, there is a faint pattern line there.
I knew I wanted a wider bib, for slightly more protection from dirt, but I like the height of the "armscye" (so to speak) of my cooking apron, so I traced that for a bit and then swooped the line up more sharply, for an additional two inches or so of width.

A close up of the bib of a colonial-blue cooking apron, folded down to reveal the marked pattern. Faint pen lines descibe a square neckline and lightly curved outer edge against the faintly patterned back of the green, turquoise, and grey tropical floral fabric.
Now I just have to transfer the marks to the other side...
I also made the straps extra long on the front and side pieces; they'll be easy to adjust shorter, but I don't want to fuss with adding scraps to extend them.

Two pattern pieces cut from patterned green, turquoise, and grey tropical floral fabric, laid out with wrong sides showing. The piece on the left is a tall, slim trapezoid with a long strap protruding from the top edge, aligned with the leftmost edge of the shape. The right piece is almost twice as broad, also roughly trapezoidal, with a slight curve from the edge where it meets the left piece proceeding up to become the left edge of a short strap. A square neckline is cut from the other side of the strap. The hems are mismatched by about five inches, and angled slightly opposite each other to make a ragged down-pointing arrow. Bright sunlight dapples everything.
Don't worry, I have a plan for the mismatched hem.
The side pieces were...challenging. To get the straps to lay right, I needed to attach the side pieces to the front at an angle. But the side seam was already at an angle. But the back half of the straps sprang straight from the piece, so did it need more angular...angling?

Obviously, I picked a solution and ran with it, again leaving the strap very long, and not fussing with the hem yet. The front piece is definitely longer than I need, and I don't need the back to cover quite so much as a pinafore, so the choppy, mismatched hem is just to take advantage of the selvedge protecting those edges while I flip and turn and otherwise mangle the pieces during construction.

The wrong side of a pair of straps cut from green, turquoise, and grey tropical floral patterned fabric, with faint pen lines marked about an inch in from the cut edges and pinned with a slight underlap. The pinned end is flipped back to show the selvedge of the shorter strap, and a peep of the true print colors.
Not pictured: the man who felt the need to sit exactly next to me in the otherwise-empty laundromat.
My first try at matching up the straps was right at the ends, just to see how things would hang—that put the seam right on top of my shoulders, and let the sides hang a little looser than I wanted, so the front wanted to flare out away from my body. I cinched up the back straps by about an inch each, and that did the trick. Now the seams are just behind my shoulders, where they won't rub much, and the sides sit a little closer. Again, I left the selvedges in place (along with the absolutely huge seam allowance on the long edges; they're along the grain, so I wanted a bit of security against fraying).

A low-angle photo from above of an half-constructed apron on a scarred white plastic table. The focus is on crossed straps, pinned at the near ends, showing the fainter pattern on the back of the green, turquoise, and grey tropical floral patterned fabric and faint pen lines about an inch in from the cut edges. The more saturated fron to fthe fabric shows at the sides of the ex formed by the straps, and in the gap between the side pieces at the top of the ex.
It took a lot of brain bending in the beginning to work out pattern pieces that would do this gracefully.
Pretty cute so far, but of course, a garden apron isn't much use without pockets to stow tools, seed packets, and harvested bits (or toads? You never know what you might need to stash in an apron). I have a little more work to do before the apron's done (that gold-dotted fabric hasn't even put in an appearance yet!), so I'll leave it here for now.

Macro photo of faintly purple-white, four-petaled flowers, arranged alternately on tall stems. The flowers have short yellow-green stamens and black-purple veins, intense in the narrow bases of the petals, and fading at the flared oval ends. They're carried in long cylidrical sepals on short fine stems sprouting from the main stalk. Blurry medium-green and blue-green leaves fill the background.
We could make the most darling salad with these.
This is what happens, by the way, if your arugula bolts. Amazingly, it's still quite edible, though the leaves are pretty strong. I haven't yet harvested the flowers to toss on a salad, but eventually I'll remember to grab some on my way through the garden. The kale hasn't bolted yet (weird), despite 90-degree days, so we're still eating it, too.

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