Project Quilting 16.2 - Ombre Apron

I have a handful of back-burner project just waiting for time or a reason to start them.  This week's Project Quilting Ombre challenge turned out to be an excellent opportunity to make myself an apron. 

Sunday I measured Rob's apron, looked at some patterns and dug through my stash.  I was tempted to go for a black and grey ombre... but I don't DARE touch any of the potential leftovers of my current project.  Not until it's done!  I pulled out some greens, blues, neutrals, reds.  I ended with a set of 15 pinks and reds:  several quilt leftovers, a couple of quilt rejects and a few that simply caught my eye.  

My next thought - why do plain stripes when I could do waves?  I had to laugh at how similar this was last year's second week challenge.  Really, I was going to do something different.  Oh, well.

I spent Monday afternoon putting it together - my day off well spent!  All my previous wavy string quilts have been stitched right-sides together.  This time I wanted to try something different:  cutting the curves, ironing over the raw edge, then top-stitching it on top of the next piece.  This allowed me to cut several pieces up front, then sew them together without needing to stop and fussy cut each subsequent piece.  It was so fast and easy, it almost felt like cheating.  I soon had a piece of ombre fabric, about 40 inches wide and 33 inches long.

I selected a blue fabric for backing and cut that piece as my pattern.  The ombre fabrics were initially three-inch strips - I thought I cut them wide enough, but with the curves they came a little shorter than the apron length I wanted.  Since the fabric wider than the apron, I used the excess on the side to make one more strip on the bottom.  Perfect!

I made some straps, added some extra wave fabric to the blue as an accent, lined the two pieces right-sides together and stitched around the edge, leaving a little gap at the bottom to turn inside-out.  Flipped it right sides out, ironed, top-stitched and ran a few wavy lines of stitching to prevent one side or the other from sagging. 

 

Lastly, I jammed a label in the side seam.  I took a guess at which way to orient it, and of course it's backwards to the way I wanted.  I can live with that - it's done!

I wish I had taken some photos of my progress, but I was having too much fun.  (I look so serious in this photo - but I'm smirking.  Honest!) 

I am a messy baker - I'm focused on what I'm working on and not where bits of flour and batter end up.  Rob despairs over the state of my clothing when I'm in the kitchen.  So Rob's first question when I showed him the finished apron was "Will you use it?"  LOL.  I hope so! 

 

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