Reconstruction

They say that behind every crafter, there is a room full of unfinished crafts. If that were true of me, there wouldn't be room for Abe in our little one-bedroom. So I'm very proud to announce that my number one unfinished craft is complete!
I started this apron last year for Kimberly's birthday. I made some good progress before my sewing machine started "acting a fool".* My dad can fix anything, so he came over recently to help me set my machine aright. And we were off! I finished the apron shortly before Kimberly's birthday this year. (All the good crafts do seem to go to her house.)
This was the first thing I've sewn without any kind of pattern, and I made it from an enormous wraparound skirt I bought at Goodwill (by enormous, I mean like Sisterhood of the Traveling Skirt, in which we could all wear it together for traveling in order to pay much less for our tickets). This was brilliant on my part, because it means the cute details came ready-made: red hem tape! a button! flirty red lining! The key to this project is finding a massive enough skirt to begin with (and one with a cute lining, since it will show). You need enough material for the bottom half of the apron (I used the existing front of the skirt to get the wraparound detail), the top half, those seam allowances, and all the ties. I had enough lining to make a pocket, and just to be cute I reused a little of the hem tape across the top like so:
Fabric and notions - buttons and hem tape - can be a little pricey, so reconstructing an existing garment is a great way to save your cash. All in all, a success, and a project I'd recommend if you're going homemade for your gifts this holiday.

*Do you like that? It's a little something I picked up at work, along with the cough/cold/flu that knocked me out for most of the month.