Spring Aprons

I have been having a bit of a fabric splurge recently. Call it reaction to the long cold damp days of winter or what you will but I have felt the need to acquire some spring colour in the fabric line and to play with it accordingly.

Want to see what I made? Spring aprons! Most of my aprons are in sensible colours that do not show every single, tiny mark but I got it into my head that I wanted to make some Spring aprons littered with blossomy flowers in the lightest colours and Springiest fabrics I could find. I intended to make just two or three but one thing led to another and I ended up with eight of these Spring ladies hanging from a hook, all dressed up with nowhere to go. I am giving one to my mother for Mothering Sunday, one is for my homemade present stash and I am keeping one for myself. Not sure which yet because I can't decide which fabric permutation I prefer! But how many Spring aprons can one woman wear?!

So ... I hope you will like the outcome of the rest of this foray because it results in a little give-away. Spring aprons for Easter, a sunny Spring Bank Holiday or whatever you fancy. I don't claim any fabulously sophisticated stitching skills and I am not offering anything that you gifted stitchers out there couldn't perfectly well make yourselves, but just in case you haven't had time and fancy a bit of floral spring pink or blue in your kitchen for free, here's your chance! If the prospect of acquiring any of these makes you as happy as making them made me, we will both be winners.

I hope you can see what they are like from the pics  - I found them rather awkward camera customers!

I made them some weeks ago and wanted originally to photograph them in the apple or the cherry tree once it was in blossom but in the end I felt that as they were designed to be used in the Spring I would do better to forego this idea and let the flowery fabric provide the blossom against the bare apple branches otherwise Spring would be gone before they got to their destinations!

The fabrics are from two sources. One batch is Rowan Cotton: "Delilah Posy"in both the pink and blue colourways , "Delilah Buds" in pink and "Delilah Paisley" in blue. The other batch is Greengate: "Heather White" and "Ivy Blue". The Greengate fabric is slightly heavier in weight than the Rowan. Both are gorgeously pretty, in my humble opinion anyway and have provided a bit of Spring blossom to enjoy long before any of it was out in my garden. 

I only had just enough fabric to make my eight aprons and the Greengate fabric didn't stretch quite as far as I hoped so the pockets on these ones have had to be pieced together. I don't think anyone other than you and I will notice though!

I could have made the pockets much smaller and got away without piecing but I like the pockets on my aprons to mean business.

They have to be big enough to keep spare kitchen utensils to hand, so that when my hands are covered in flour etc, I do not cover everything in the drawer (except the one thing I am hunting for) with sticky bits of dough; they must be large enough to accommodate the phone which rings just as I am in the middle of a delicate oven-unloading operation and I have to say I will call someone back in two minutes; they must be capacious enough to receive a barrage of clothes pegs when I need to get the washing in off the line quickly, before it pours with rain in about thirty seconds, house keys when I pop out to get a lively lettuce or a bunch of squeaky green spinach from the vegetable patch and want to avoid being locked out, when the door suddenly swings shut in a gust of wind, those scraps of paper I write phone messages, vital email addresses or phone numbers on with one hand, with the phone under my ear and whisking a sponge with the other hand etc etc.

They are designed for work as well as for show and can be stuck in the washing machine without a second's thought once you have got cake mixture or the tracks from a a slippery, run-away avocado on them. You don't have this? I think I must be rather clumsy in the kitchen!

OK here's what you have to do. It's pretty simple, not least because anything more complicated may fall outside my limited technopowers to operate!

Put a comment on this post saying that you would like one. That's it! Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

Oh and you need to be willing to email me your postal address if you win one because otherwise I won't be able to send it to you.

You don't have to become a follower or dance a jig or attach a connecting gizmo to your blog. I am simply looking for happy homes to give these away to where they can cheerfully accompany some Spring baking or cooking or crafting. If you want to add to your comment what you see yourself making or baking in one of these, I'd love to hear but you don't have to. 

I have discovered one of these magic websites, (I hope it's foolproof), which generate random numbers and on 25th March I will get it to pull five winners out of a hat. I will then put up a little celebratory post giving the names of the winners so that they can email me with their addresses and I will send them their aprons, hopefully in time for a bit of Easter baking. 

Simple? I hope so!

                                  Fun? I think so!

                                                                Day-brightening? I trust so!