Aprons, Aprons, Aprons

About a year ago, I picked up a publication called "apronology" by Stampington & Company. I have been a fan of Stampington publications, and this one seemed so interesting. The magazine features dozens of aprons that were painted, elaborately embellished, and made from upcycled materials. I thought maybe I would make an apron.

Then last spring, while driving from upstate New York to Texas (I was driving back with my son from college), we stopped in Bardstown, Kentucky, which is in the middle of bourbon country. We discovered a modest antique store. It was there I bought my first piece of feedsack fabric. What a great start for an apron, I thought.

Back in San Antonio, I took that piece of feedsack, shopped for fabric that would match, and dug through my box of buttons and laces to find the perfect embellishments. I was getting hooked on the process of creating aprons. I sewed the apron (I hadn't sewed anything for years), and it turned out perfect! I was really hooked then, because the apron turned out just the way I had pictured in my mind (my crafts don't always turn out that way!).

Shown below is my first apron.



I made another one, and then another one, and then another one! The most fun I have making these aprons is the thrill of the hunt for materials. I am finding wonderful fellow Etsians who have beautiful feedsack and vintage fabrics. Today I went to one of favorite San Antonio antique stores, Back Alley Antiques at Artisan's Alley, and sorted through a box of old doilies and laces searching for apron embellishments.

Pictured below are some of my other creations:



The reverse side of the apron shown above:



I love the cheery colors of this apron. They remind me of cherries and blueberries!


This Thanksgiving apron lovers everywhere will make or purchase breads, wrap the bakery goods in an apron, and give them to someone who needs a lift up during the holiday season. I have included a link to "National Tie One On Day" to the right. Please visit the sites to find out more about how you can "Tie One On" this holiday season!

More aprons!







I had been considering opening another Etsy shop. I knew I wanted to have items that were tied to the past in some way. Well, here I was with these aprons, and I decided that they were perfect for the first items in my shop. Please visit my new new shop, Summer's Place (named for my youngest granddaughter, Summer). Come back often to find more treasures!

It is funny how many of my posts somehow lead back to my mom. She has been gone for many years now, but I still think of her often. She always wore aprons, and would make little aprons for me, too. I think that my new love of aprons connects me to her somehow.

For the Love of Junk

I think is my age, but there are so many things I do these days that I relate to things I did or happened to me when I was a kid (see my mushroom soup story). Well, here is another one.

I was born in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, a small town in the western part of the state. Proclaimed an "All American" town (evidenced by the license plate frames on citizen's cars), Clearfield is tucked away in the Appalachia hills along the shore of the Susquehana River. My father was in the Air Force and we moved from Clearfield when I was just a toddler. Most summers, my father would take his annual leave and my mother would load up me and my three older siblings in the green and white Dodge (that had huge fins and a nifty speedometer that looked a bit like a thermometer with a red line that increased in size the faster you went). On the way,my mom would pacify us with Lifesavers and teaberry gum. She packed an old metal cooler with sandwiches that we would eat at roadside picnic tables. No DVD systems in the car or Mickie D's for fast food back then. Just four kids in the back seat for two and a half days.

We would stay at my grandma's farmhouse. It was there I saw my first wild turkey, my first deer herd, my first groundhog. And, it was when I first went "junking" with my mother. My siblings were self-sustaining. I, on the other hand, was the baby, and had to go with my mother. Junking was not my idea of fun. I dreaded being dragged from store to store by my mom. But she loved it. The stores we went to were by no means antique stores. They were junk stores, full of the promise of buried treasure. My mom was thrilled when she found her treasure buried deep under a heap of other junk.

I no longer dread going to  junk stores.  Like my mom, I am now the one who is thrilled to  find the treasures hidden behind the junk stores' doors-the junk that is buried under the nice stuff, the junk that costs a dollar or so.

On a recent weekend, I visited an antique mall in Austin, Texas. Many of the "shops" in the mall were staged to look like little stores. But there was one...one... that was a dream come true. There were just shelves of baskets full of vintage lace and trim, wooden thread spools, a few old doll trunks, hats, shoes, scarves, music sheets, this and that. It was a place my mom would have loved. I diligently worked until I found my treasure and headed home.

Here is a photo of some of the treasures I picked up.

I have recently been reading several Stampington publications, including Somerset Life and GreenCraft. One issue featured an article on Victorian-style gift cones. They were beautiful-a little bit frilly and girly, a little bit tacky, a little bit rustic, and easy to make. I thought I would give a whirl.

I bought a paper pad of vintage-style double-sided card stock (on sale at Michael's!), and scoured my stash of this and that, including my recent finds from the antique mall. I came across several cards of vintage lace that I picked up at an antique store in my hometown in Pennsylvania. I found an old hat and some old postcards I bought in Canadaigua, New York. I found buttons, ribbons, reproductions of old skeleton keys, twine, raffia, pom poms, old wire, copper-colored pipe cleaners, glitter, and some really pretty embossed bird and butterfly dies cuts from Germany that I bought some time ago on Etsy.

So I set about to make a cone. I simply shaped the 12 X 12 piece of card stock into a cone shape. Once I found the right shape, I fashioned that into my pattern. I found double-sided tape to be the best way to close the cone. Once I had my cone, I decorated it with items from my stash. The more I embellished the cone, the more beautiful it became. The Victorians were known for their ornate style, so I think I was in keeping with their standards.

There is an old saying, "What goes around, comes around." Remember the junk stores in Clearfield and Canadaigua? Well, I drug my 21-year-old son with me to those stores while on our road trip from Texas to Rochester, New York, where he goes to school. He was very patient with me as I scoured the stores to find my loot. He doesn't know it yet, but one day I am sure he will make the love of junk come around again!