I taught an apron sewing class today. Our class was pretty small but that made it good practice for me; I'm still pretty nervous every time I teach. This is the apron I made as I was teaching. It is also my entry for the next Tie One On.

The theme is "spend no money" and aprons are due at the end of April. I had read that earlier this week and thought "I should have a look around and see if I've got something I can turn into an apron but I can't think of anything pretty and anyway I've got lots of time" and went on with the rest of my day. A couple of days later I started getting ready for my class and this morning I pulled some things out of my shelves for demonstrating while I taught. I was just sewing on the waistband when I realized that I'd made an apron and spend no money on it. So not only did I make the theme project, I finished it long before the deadline and completely by accident.

The brown broadcloth is leftover from Abby's bed and the curved seam cushions. The pocket fabric came from a fat quarter I had in my stash. The pocket lining was a remnant from the backing on Rob's quilt and the lace was from a bag of goodies gifted to me by my friend's mother when she cleaned up her sewing room a couple of years ago (thanks Margo).

... and it's so cute! I love this new addition to my apron collection.

I received my swap apron on Friday. It's so cute and so springy. Included with it was a recipe for Chicken and Wild Rise Soup that we'll be making up as soon as we can gather up all the ingredients. There was also a card of three big vintage buttons. These were extra cool since I had been thinking just that afternoon that I really needed some nice big buttons for my button box - now I have some!

Here's the front:

And here's the back:

This is a reversible apron (two aprons in one!) and I love the piping on the pockets. Here's a look at one of the pockets and the buttons:

Since this apron arrived just as I was starting dinner (and I wasn't going to wait to open the package) it has already been given a good test drive and performed beautifully for making dinner, washing dishes, doing laundry and working on some craft stuff (more on that later).

Thanks Andrea  :)

I put the apron I made into the mail today. It was a lot of fun to make and turned out so cute I might have to make another for myself. I used the pattern from Simple Sewing by Lotta Jansdotter. It's a reversible apron so I put pockets on both sides.  I also made the side ties much wider than called for in the pattern so that they'd make a nice bow in the back. Here are some pictures from the rest of the process.