May 29, 2023

New blog post available! Why do we love Apron Patterns?

Find the full post with proper formatting here:

https://mrsdepew.com/f/why-do-we-love-apron-patterns

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What is it about vintage apron patterns that just makes me shiver with delight when I find one?

1920s embroidered apron pattern McCall 3950.</figure>

Perhaps it's the gorgeous artwork that seems to grace each envelope... (I'm looking at you, McCall, you know you're the best at it.)

1930s color block apron with flower applique McCall 246.</figure>

Perhaps it's the fact that I wear aprons more frequently than any other garment... They are the easiest garment to sew, in my humble opinion.

A 1920s apron pattern that I have enjoyed sewing many a time.</figure>

Perhaps aprons themselves are made of memories; memories that never quite wash out of the fabric as the years pass.

Maybe apron patterns remind me of my mother giving me my first vintage apron just before I got married...

Actually, I'll tell that story.

My brilliant, hardworking feminist mother didn't gift me the apron because I was engaged and about to start cooking for a husband. At my engagement party, she had already given me an ominously large wooden spoon that matched the massive vintage rolling pin my grandmother gave me. Both were presented simultaneously by my family matriarchs with the joint statement, "For laying down the law." No, she didn't expect me to be the cute little wifey in an apron, though I have occasionally donned that role between jobs and overseas moves.

Probably not me, though I have been known to look lovingly at cake like that...

Rather, on the day I received my first apron, my Mother was driving me home from the airport after I returned from a semester as an intern at an embassy in Washington D.C.

It was summer in Nebraska and the AC in her dilapidated old Chevy Astro Van was broken. We had the windows down and my long curly hair was blowing furiously everywhere. With all hair accouterments packed away in my luggage, I asked her if she had any ideas about what to do with my hair.

She kept one hand on the wheel, and with the other, rooted around blindly behind her in one of the many boxes of her antique shop inventory that were always crammed in the back.

"Aha! Fabric!" she eventually exclaimed triumphantly.

She pulled forth a wadded bunch of really beautiful 1940s cotton feed sack fabric and tossed it without looking at me in the passenger seat next to her.

"Whatever the hell it is, wrap your hair up in it, Madame Ambassador." (she had taken to calling me that since I had gotten off the plane, clearly still delighted at even my lowly intern status at so lofty a location.)

The fabric turned out to be an apron, and as I wrapped it around my head like a scarf and used the sash ties to secure it in place, that was it. I was in love with aprons. This was the very first time in my life I had ever worn one, on my head or otherwise. (Don't get me wrong, I LOVED cooking, but I was, and still often am, a forgetful clothes-strainer.)

That day she memorialized my homecoming and my first time meeting the new foal that our horse Rosey had presented a few days previously by taking this photo - my hair still wrapped glamorously in a faded vintage apron, which is still my favorite to this day.

So in honor of vintage aprons and those that wore them everywhere, the many jobs they have faithfully performed, the tears and messes they have wiped up, the curls they have contained, and the numerous magical memories they had a part in making, I present a bunch of pretty apron patterns to inspire your next sewing adventure.