The Picture Perfect Apron

 Have you ever seen a pattern for sale and known instantly that no matter what it took, no matter what the price, you were going to sew the hell out of it?

That's how I felt about Pictorial 8514 when I found it on Etsy.

 And boy, did I. I got the fabric during my Ikea fabric shopping adventure.

I LOVE this pattern. It came together so easily and looks fantastic. I would have completed it much more quickly but I kept running out of bias binding. This apron took over 6 yards of bias binding (that's two trips to the store for not reading the pattern envelope very carefully!).

The ruffles are insane, and frilly, and girly and there almost aren't enough of them.

 While I was monogramming the matching towels, I made sure that I embroidered my pocket fabric at the same time. I'm not a fan of changing out my embroidery foot mechanism more than I absolutely have to.

 I think that this sailor collar is the very best part. How amazing would this apron look in navy blue with a cute little anchor embroidered on the pocket?!

And naturally, Vincent is always there to help with the photo-shoots...

It's so hard to find apron patterns from the 1930's, and even harder to find ones that are cute enough to sew. What do you think, should I make a digital reproduction of the pattern so others can have as much fun with it as I did?

Bomb Girls

If you're not watching Bomb Girls yet, you should be.

The Canadian show is a beautifully put together drama about the women who bravely worked in one of several munitions factories to help the war effort during World War II.

Women heard the call in every country involved in World War II and rose above social restraints and convention to take the places of men who had gone on to fight.

Women diligently working in a Russian munitions factory.

In some countries, joining the work force was required, as in the UK's Land army. In other cases, it was voluntary, and many women caught hell from various detractors who thought it was more important to defend a woman's role as home-maker than it was to win a war against a violent aggressor.

Bomb girls does an amazing job of depicting not only the war effort, the stress these women were under to keep their men well armed, the worries they shared over sweethearts in harm's way, and gives a very good idea of what it was like to live and work during a war, with the rumor of possible invasion looming over their heads. (And the clothes aren't half bad either.)

But more importantly, what Bomb Girls does is shows how much many women welcomed the chance to work, how they valued their sudden independence, and how willing they were to hang on like hell to that independence after the men came home.

The poster above is a great illustration of the sudden power given to women to contribute to their countries as valued citizens.

This topic is particularly dear to my heart because my great grandmother, Ora, worked in a bomb factory herself during the war. Her middle finger was somehow smashed between two bombs. It healed straight and she was never able to bend it, but she still somehow managed to play the piano, straight finger and all. I remember my dad telling me that he thought it was so funny when he was little, she would make a fist, and her middle finger would still stick straight out. How I wish I could have met her.

Thank you to all the women who worked harder than we can imagine to fight the war in any way they could, and who paved the way for women to have the social and financial freedoms that many of us take for granted today.




You can watch bomb girls online here.