Project Quilting 15.5: Wearables

This week's Project Quilting challenge theme, Wearables, certainly caused a pang of panic when it was first announced. Our project must be wearable, or have been made from previously worn items, or have another connection to clothes, shoes and fashion accessories. Eek! Not only was I traveling/teaching at Empty Spools Seminars for the first half of the week, but my garment-making experience and skills are  sparse. Thankfully, this week's challenge allowed us to break the typical rules requirement that all entries must include 3-layers or embellished or pieced: How could I resist the opportunity to break the rules!?!

On my drive home from teaching, I reflected on my week of teaching Mark Making & Mandala Magic. As we were playing with a variety of acrylic paints, I wore my apron that was gifted to me after serving on my guild's Quilt Show planning committee. It's certainly gotten a lot of use with fabric dyeing and a variety of surface design techniques...which is exactly why I wear it! 

Two of my students sported spiffy aprons that one of them made featuring a beautiful mandala and their names. I decided this was the perfect opportunity to sew a new apron to wear while teaching my surface design workshops! 

My initial game plan was to start with a piece of duck cloth, add a bit of block printing (perhaps a block-printed mandala?), and use some Fabmo fabric for the pocket thereby fulfilling my two personal challenges for this season. I already had an assortment of duck cloth on hand from making tote bags and found this lovely aqua blue piece that I washed to remove any sizing/chemicals. I pulled out a few Fabmo fabrics from my stash, but nothing that really excited me. Luckily, Fabmo had shopping appointments on Saturday and so I brought a swatch of the blue duck cloth and hoped I might find some better fabric options.

I couldn't believe my luck when I found this single large flat-fold swatch as it beautifully coordinated with the blue duck cloth and it included incredible colors, lines, patterns, and shapes!

Instead of using this fabulous print only for the pocket, I decided to use it for the body of the apron as it was thankfully big enough--just barely!

I used my old apron as a template to draft a pattern with slight modifications.

Only I would use all my scissors to help weight down the pattern for cutting the fabric! I was not looking forward to spending hours prepare yards and yards of bias tape to finish my apron but then I remembered that I had quite a few packages of Wright's bias-tape already on hand. I was especially delighted to find two packages of a coordinating grey which would save me considerable effort and time. Unfortunately these plans were thrwarted when I realized it was single fold and way too skinny. A quick online search showed that the closest Joann's had several colors in stock so I grabbed my car keys to go. GPS indicated it would be a half hour drive but then I remembered a Fabric R'Us store that was only 8 minutes away! There I found a beautiful coordinating green wide double-fold bias tape and purchased 7 yards just to be on the safe side for less than $6 total. Once back home, I used Elmer's white school glue to glue baste the binding into place before top stitching to finish the raw edges. I made the ties extra long so I could wrap around me and tie in front.

It was hard to believe that by 4:30 PM Saturday afternoon, I had a technically-finished wearable for Project Quilting! But I still wanted to add some original mark making and a much-needed pocket to complete my project! I gathered a collection of hand-carved blocks as well as other tools to make coordinating marks on the blue duck cloth to create a large front pocket.

Once the paint was dry, I prepared the pocket and stitched it on including a center stitch line to form two smaller pockets. Here is the finished apron...

And here is proof I can make wearables!

Ready for Mark-Making Fun & Teaching!

Thank you Trisha and Kim for hosting this fun Wearables challenge as it definitely nudged me out of my comfort zone! I am very excited to wear my new apron when teaching some of my newer surface design workshops: Block Print & Play!, Mark Making Magic, and a new Exploring Evolon in Your Fiber Art workshop that will debut while teaching at Pacific International Quilt Festival this July!