Blogtoberfest Day 13: Another Collection

With a post everyday, I have had the chance to recall how I really learned about blogging. The answer was Google Search: Vintage Apron. That started everything really. I had a few vintage aprons and I wondered if there was anything on the web about them. What a Pandora's Box that was! Some of my early (and still) favourite blogs from that initial search were Jane's Apron, Apron Thrift Girl, Oodles and Oodles, BitterBetty and The Apronista. Of course, reading about other apron collections and seeing their aprons only fueled my collector's zeal and I now have more aprons than I care to admit to.


Cooler and wet weather started today and I have my daughter home sick. The combination has led to a pottering about the house/resisting hibernation kind of day for me. I am not sure that I accomplished a lot but this apron is just the kind of apron to boost my energy. I love the crispness of the colour combination and the design balance with the diagonal seam across the panel balanced by a classic 'feature pocket'. When I have looked at various vintage apron patterns, this particular apron does not strike me as a familiar design but it has a familiar feel to the design. I suspect that the maker of this apron had some design input and was strongly influenced by what other homemakers were making.



This apron would be called a chicken scratch apron because of the cross-stitch and smocking worked into the gingham fabric looking like chicken prints in the dirt. This one is more the smocking variety than the cross-stitch type of apron. This was often used as an introduction to embroidery for young girls. I remember some of my earliest needlework was cross-stitching in the squares of gingham. An apron is the perfect size for a beginners sewing project and could be proudly worn when completed. The golden colour of this example is perfect for Autumn.


As sewing skills improved, you could make a fancy apron to be worn when entertaining. This one uses a combination of sheer cotton voile and a print with violets. The colours and style of the border print suggest the 1940's to me but I would not call myself an expert on dating fabrics -more knowledge being a goal! I remember receiving cards from my Grandmother that she had likely saved from the late 1940's or early 1950's that have a similar design feel and colouration to the border print. A bit of the print is appliqued with a very short straight stitch which suggests that the sewer did not have a zig-zag machine. The edges all have small, neat hems and the border is attached to the body of the apron enclosing the seam. The result is something that any hostess would have been proud to wear.

This last apron really strikes a nostalgic chord in me. I think that the print is fabric left over from making kitchen curtains, most likely in the 1960's. The weight of the fabric is most definitely suited to curtains. When I was very young in the late 1960's and early 1970's I remember a number of kitchens with these characteristic prints showing coffee pots and coffee grinders, wine bottles and fruit baskets. Often kitchens were decorated in this type of wall paper. A coffee shop that I remember from my childhood, the Copper Kettle, had such wall paper in pink and beige tones. The memories evoked by this kind of design and colour combination are almost as strong as what is evoked by the scent of certain things. I suppose that makes things such as our home environment important to our children in ways that we do not usually think about.


I tried to connect my Pyrex post to Vintage Velda's Collections and Collecting Party with limited success so I thought that I might try again. Please go the link to see what some other bloggers collect.