Gingham Aprons of the '40s & '50s by Judy Florence

This is a copy of a review that I also posted to Amazon. I received this book as a birthday present from my incredibly long Amazon wish list and was very happy to get it.

I enjoyed reading the book very much and loved seeing the many close up photo details although I am stumped in why these aprons look so pristine! I am an apron wearer and I make my own aprons and most of them with use would never make it to a collection of 'Aprons of the 1980's to 2020's'. They are pretty mucked up within a five to ten year span, but then that is the whole point of an apron isn't it? I can see that some of the apron would have been set aside for good, or like my Christmas apron only for certain special occasions.

Most of the aprons in the book were homemade using machines, while some were completely sewn by hand. The worse looking aprons were made in factories and it certainly shows the difference between tender loving care when sewing and seeing just how many you can whip up in a day when being paid via piecework.

While it was nice to see some approximate values on the aprons, you have to remember that the book was published in 2003 and with the plethora of on line selling venues available since that point, those values are most likely highly inaccurate at this point. My favorite thing was seeing how the makers worked all sorts of rick rack into the aprons as well as embroidery and 'Chicken Scratch' embroidery. I have all sorts of vintage rick rack that I have acquired at my local thrift store and it was good to see the different and attractive ways I can use it. It is obvious though, that the ladies of long ago who made these aprons had no access to Pinterest and its many ideas and links to websites that showed some magnificent ways of doing Chicken Scratch embroidery! If they had they would have really gone to town with Chicken Scratch! It seems that the more ideas spread on Pinterest the more people are trying to out do each other.

All together a very interesting book to those that love aprons, embroidery, rick rack, vintage sewing and/or vintage garments. It is about research and study and has no instructions for making any of the aprons although it does reference a few vintage apron patterns as well as embroidery transfer patterns. The author does have a legible photo of a vintage apron pattern instructions in the book and you should be able to follow them if you like since there are no tissue patterns involved and it even includes two different charts for doing counted cross stitch to embellish the apron. For more apron patterns, you should be able to find both current and vintage as well as vintage pattern reprints on sewing pattern selling sites including mine at Moonwishes Sewing and Crafts. Since reading this book, I have put the author's other book; Aprons of the Mid-20th Century: To Serve and Protect (A Schiffer Book for Designers and Collectors)on my Wish List.

A Great Stash and Scrap Quilt Idea

I've never been big on the idea that I have to 'bust' my stash of fabrics. To me my fabric is like money in the bank. I have enough to keep me happily quilting along for many years with only the need to buy thread and batting. So when I see websites for using up scraps  I'm always happy to file those ideas away in my head, especially ones that will use mis-cut fabric that once cut wrong, all you can do generally is make it into a smaller piece and that wastes your precious scraps. So check out this website for a quilt top that makes use of left over strips and 'crumbs'. Visit Quilting is still my Passion for a very interesting idea. While the writer says you can use any color, think about how this would work using leftover juvenile prints for more Project Linus quilt tops. Or if for some reason you have been doing a lot of quilting using the same colors, this would be a great way to make one more quilt in those same colors. Or using all your leftover plaid pieces or leftover dot or stripe pieces. Anything that is a variation on a theme. So while you may have made a bedroom quilt, you may be able to make so pillows or a lap/nap quilt to go along with the room décor but without the having the same designs.

Life has been, shall we say interesting for the past few weeks. Got up a couple of weeks ago to a dead monitor. This is not good when one has an on-line business and generally has to get orders out every morning. At the same time my back-up laptop is slowing dying. Try to go too fast with it, it will freeze up and it is pokier than I am and that is saying a lot. At the same time I had been sent a computer to review -- Yeah me! It is Windows 10. Our Wi-Fi for some reason was going slow as well. You don't pay for satellite speed to get the equivalent of dial up! So hubby had his work cut out for him as he also had his own computer that needed installed and it wasn't Windows 10 compatible. A week and a half later, I'm using my new computer and flat screen monitor, but our Windows office doesn't seem to want to play nice with our older files. Can you imagine the work to reconstruct a database that has over 12000 patterns listed in it along with all listing information? So he is still working on a few things. And trying to keep up blogs, etc. went by the wayside. I always want to be more regular with all three of my blogs, but with poor health and computers demanding vacation time, I can't always get to it like I would like. For that I apologize.

Crafty Christmas Trunk Show

Check out this video to see some great ideas for Christmas Crafting for gifts and decorations.