Labels

It Has Pocketses!

As promised, part two of making a garden apron—with pockets, because that's the whole point and also the fashion hill I will die on.

A spearlike ginger shoot with four lanceolate, ripple-edged leaves, emerging from a half-buried brown-and-green rhizome in a light teal, rounded rectangular ceramic pot, set on a white shelf in front of a window.
My child.
First, an interlude with the ginger that rose from the dead, who is doing splendidly, and may even be preparing to send up another shoot. Meanwhile, the ginger I bought from the grocery store, which really shouldn't be capable of growing, is greening up and beginning to shoot out. I guess...I'll plant it...too...? I was kind of hoping to eat that root, though.

Anyway, the sewing!

A small, square piece of green, turquoise, and grey tropical floral patterned fabric, wrong side up, with a wide strip of light lime-green fabric pinned around three sides, obscuring all but a narrow rectangle of the base piece. The green strip has torn long edges and clean-cut short ends, and is mitered at the far corners with two small, angled pleats. A tiny tupperware full of silver pins and a small pair of silver scissors show at the top right of the photo, on the scarred white plastic table.
Those miters only took me like ten minutes.
I saved the cutout from the neckline of the front apron piece to make a small pocket for things like seed packets and my phone, to keep them from being crushed by whatever else I might stow in the larger pocket I was planning. Of course, I also wanted to make it stand out from the main apron—the busy pattern is on purpose, but it does conceal seam lines and detailing, and patch pockets are really meant to be seen. So I tore a nearly-three-inch strip of the gold dot fabric, and pinned it to make a little edge binding.

A close-up of three tiny pleats in light lime-green fabric, held with silver pins, and propped up be a white hand with finger and thumb.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
Generally binding that has to go around curves is bias binding. I am lazy, and I was also secretly hoping to have enough gold dot fabric left over to face the hem of my denim skirt, because that would be adorable and more or less my secret (aside from...all of you, who now know). So I tore straight strips, and made tiny tucks wherever I needed them to keep the binding running more-or-less smoothly around the pocket edges.

A piece of green, turquoise, and grey tropical floral patterned fabric with a strip of light lime-green fabric pinned to the edge, following the gently curved cutout at the top righr corner and continuing down the straight edge at right out of frame, arranged on the deck of a white sewing machine ready to start stitching.
This machine and I don't really get along yet.
Got lots of practice in following curves, pulling pins without letting pleats collapse, and generally being inept-but-determined.

A stacked set of pockets, made of green, turquoise, and grey tropical floral patterned fabric and bound in light lime-green fabric with densely scattered gold dots. The smaller pocket is square with rounded bottom edges, bound all the way around, and centered on the larger, rectangular piece with quarter-circle cutouts from the top corners, and rounded bottom corners. The larger piece is bound only across the top edge, with a dense white zigzag stitch following the other three edges about half an inch in.
Cute. As. Shit.
I skipped the bit where I folded and pinned and folded and pinned, trying desperately for a smoother finish to the corners. It wasn't graceful, nor could I take a photo with both hands occupied while swearing steadily. Instead, you get to see the result! A big pocket, with a little pocket (and binding the top edge of the little pocket was such a treat—all straight lines, nothing fancy at all), and zigzag to stabilize the side/lower edges of the big pocket, because I felt like it. And I'm still hoping for enough gold dot fabric to do a hem facing.

Rather than try to wrestle the big pocket and the apron front through the machine so the attaching seam would be hidden on the inside of the pocket, I folded under the raw edge and ran another zigzag stitched line just inside the fold. It's decorative where it's visible, as well as being one more layer of reinforcement for the raw edge (and whatever I end up stowing in that pocket—tomatoes? sweet potatoes? rocks? Could be anything).

A photo from above of an apron made of green, turquoise, and grey tropical floral patterned fabric, folded vertically in half at the center front, with the straps slightly crumpled from crossing each other. A large, rectangular pocket with a quarter-circle cut from the top corner is placed about five inches below the top of the bib, with a smaller square pocket centered on it. The smaller pocket is completely edged in light lime-green fabric with densely scattered gold dots, and the larger pocket is only edged at the top. The main sections of the apron have white selvedges at the hems, and are mismatched by about five inches, forming a ragged down-pointing arrow.
I like that this side seam almost matches so well.
And then it was time to refine the hem! I laid the apron out as neatly as I could, folded in half so no matter what I did, it would be symmetrical enough for my purposes.

A photo from above of an apron made of green, turquoise, and grey tropical floral patterned fabric, folded vertically in half at the center front, with the straps slightly crumpled from crossing each other. A large, rectangular pocket with a quarter-circle cut from the top corner is placed about five inches below the top of the bib, with a smaller square pocket centered on it. The smaller pocket is completely edged in light lime-green fabric with densely scattered gold dots, and the larger pocket is only edged at the top. The hem is angled up from center front to the side seam, where it curves sharply up to blend into the straight back edge.
Much better.
And chopped off the corners! Since it really was just removing the corners, I didn't end up wasting much fabric this way—no more, I think, than I would have if I'd cut the pieces in their final shapes to begin with.

The little tail of cut fabric at the top of the apron is where I started trimming my monstrous seam allowance down, thinking I'd do the binding for the top edge while the hem was still made of selvedges. I realized, once I had the apron on my lap and tried to straighten it out, that crossing the straps before seaming them turned the whole garment into a Möbius strip (or some related geometric concept). So I abandoned the trimming to correct the hem first, and then went back to trim down seam allowances and pin more binding on.

Lots more. It took me about four hours to pin and stitch the binding on the edge (singular!! that's so weird) of this apron. But I have just enough fabric left to face the hem of my skirt.

The first of four images in a row, showing a white, redheaded woman at the corner of a hallway, wearing a green, turquoise, and grey bibbed apron bound in light lime-green, with a large near-trapezoidal pocket and a small rounded-square pocket center front, also bound in light lime-green, over a brown t-shirt and long denim skirt. Her left hand is propped on her hip, just at the edge of the apron, and she's grinning. The second of four images in a row, showing a white, redheaded woman at the corner of a hallway, wearing a green, turquoise, and grey apron bound in light lime-green, with long crossed straps and petal-like sides flaring slightly over her hips, over a brown t-shirt and long denim skirt. Her hands are propped on her hips, just at the edge of the apron, and her hair is pulled forward over her left shoulder.. The third of four images in a row, showing a white, redheaded woman at the corner of a hallway, wearing a green, turquoise, and grey bibbed apron bound in light lime-green, with a large near-trapezoidal pocket and a small rounded-square pocket center front, also bound in light lime-green, over a brown t-shirt and long denim skirt. Her hands are tucked into the larger pocket at the quarter-circle cutouts in the upper corners, and she's looking away right, with her hair loosely braided and pulled over her left shoulder. The last of four images in a row, showing a white, redheaded woman at the corner of a hallway, wearing a green, turquoise, and grey bibbed apron bound in light lime-green, with a large near-trapezoidal pocket and a small rounded-square pocket center front, also bound in light lime-green, over a brown t-shirt and long denim skirt. The top edge of the large pocket has flopped down, showing the uneven binding and the back of the fabric, and she's shrugging with palms out toward the viewer, making a 'what can ya do' face..
Posing is challenging...and I had to pin the big pocket to make it behave.
(Wanna see some behind the scenes? Click here for the Velociraptor Dance Of Photo Posing!)

I love it so much. It fits well, and hangs nicely—getting in and out of it will take some getting used to, without straps to undo so much as wriggle out of—and the pockets are exactly where they ought to be.

I'll need to dig up a pair of buttons at some point, and make little loops or buttonholes in the top corners of the big pocket. The shaped top edge is charming, but it needs some help to stay up, and I don't want to stitch any more of it down. If I did, I'd either have an awkwardly high opening in the center, or two perfectly-placed openings at the sides, without enough room to get anything larger than my hand into the pocket. That's the exact opposite of the plan.

Not too shabby for my third project on the sewing machine. I didn't even wimp out and hand-stitch the binding down.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment