Wednesday, June 29, 2011

When I See a Stained White Cloth, I Make a Garden Apron. How About you?

My day job is slated to end at the end of August due to government funding cuts, and as a goodbye to my fabulous coworkers, I'm making each of them a gift.  When I found this old dirty chef's apron in my office (and I have NO idea how it got there...), I saw the makings of a gardening apron for my superstar gardener friend!  Here was the start of things...and this was post soak in bleach:


Ok, you can't quite see the stains in this photo, but it has several yellow spots that still didn't come out after a 6 hour bleach bath.  So what to do...what to do... oh yeah - dye it!




Half a bottle of kelly green RIT dye and a cup of salt boiling away on the stove for an hour and I came up with a color I quite liked. 



You can barely see the stains!  Next step, ironing it in half and sewing 5 pockets with straight stitches:






It was lookin' good.  But I wasn't done yet.  What does a gardening apron need?  Screen printed flowers of course!  I unearthed this screen of a doodle I'd made 3 years ago and really really loved the way it printed with a dark blue fabric ink:





With dye done, pockets sewn and pattern screen printed, I felt pretty darn good calling this one done!


I hope she likes it!

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