Pieces To Treasure: My Newest Toy!!!

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you all!!!

It has been a very busy holiday season. As always, I was very active crafting a bunch of Christmas gifts. I am so thankful for my new craft room this year. It was such a huge help to be able to make crafts and hide them away from the family. I think I actually surprised them all with little gifts.

Speaking of gifts, I was blessed with a HUGE one from my sister & brother-in-law. My sister has been working as a traveling nurse here in Tulsa and she stays with us while she's here. It's great to have her here when she can be even though it's not a ton of time, and it's helping them out at the same time. They chose to bless us at Christmas with a couple of big items. Mine was a new Serger!!!

It took me a couple of days to get some thread and get started learning how to use the serger. Ok, let me be honest, it took a couple of days to get up the nerve....why should this make me nervous...???

Anyway, a few days and a few dozen You Tube videos and I picked up some scrap material and had a go at using this machine. It's absolutely AMAZING!!! I can truly say "Where have you been all my life???" It's so stinkin' quick and makes such a great finished edge to things...I love it!!!

So I had to try a project...of course! I had a couple of yards of fabric still left from my craft room design. I've saved it hoping to make an apron I could wear while crafting. I hadn't quite found the pattern I wanted to use so back to You Tube I went. I found this reversible apron and it needed just the right amount of fabric and looked fairly simple. She is so detailed in her instructions that I felt I could tackle this project quite easily and manage to utilize my new toy as well. I just needed to pick up a few little things to get started.

So off to Hobby Lobby I went with my sweet daughter!!!

With Sweet Pea's help I picked out some coordinating fabric for the pockets and straps, some D rings and some interfacing. Here's the colors I ended up with:

I already had the striped and owl fabric because they were the inspiration fabrics for my craft room. All I needed was this orange and white polka dot fabric. It was my daughter that saw it and pointed it out (she wanted to make sure I gave her credit...consider it done!). It was actually exactly what it needed...something that wasn't plain, but not too busy...and coordinated perfectly.

As I said before I used this material for the pockets and straps of the apron. I followed the You Tube video almost exactly, with only a few small tweaks. The major one being that I added the pockets to both sides of the apron instead of just one side, making it truly reversible.

I was able to use my serger in a couple of places. First was around the top pocket to finish the edges.

I used it to sew the side straps...even though you can't see the edge in this picture...

Oh, and I MUST explain the straw and paint brush. This was a huge time saver for me. The lady in the video had a strap turner that was made specifically for this purpose. I don't have one, so I made one of my own. It doesn't quite work as well as hers, but it turned a 30 to 45 minute job into a one minute job. Let me attempt to explain. First the straw is inserted to the tube that needs to be inverted. Then take the end of the paint brush and start trying to push it through the straw. This particular straw was too small to push the material through, but I was able to pull the fabric down around the paint brush enough to invert and turn the material anyway. It was so quick and did the job well enough for my purposes!!!

Here's kind of the idea of it, but the straw is normally pushed down to the bottom. I forgot to take a picture of the magic in action. It truly is brilliant!!!

Ok, I got distracted...where were we??? Oh, yeah, my new toy!!! So I used the serger on the pocket and this strap...the last place I used it was to put the two sides together. I followed her directions for all the other steps, but instead of using the sewing machine I serged. I had to be careful how many pins to use and where to place them, plus I had to be careful how I started and ended the stitching since I needed a section to turn the apron right side out. But with some planning I was able to modify the directions and utilize my toy.

It makes such a beautiful, clean edge. Once I was finished with serging I turned the garment, ironed it out flat and top stitched around the whole thing. It closed up the bottom and the opening isn't even noticeable.

So here it is...

Side one...(please excuse the lack of makeup on my face...it wasn't a makeup kind of day!!!)

Side two!!! The middle pocket holds my phone perfectly and there's TONS of room in those pockets...with hidden pockets behind if need be!!! Oh, and did you notice...the "girls" are completely covered! That's not always an easy job for an apron!!! My husband called me "Ms. Kay" when he saw it.

If you have to ask what that means then I feel so sorry for you! If you really don't know ask me in the comments...I'll give you an education in Duck Dynasty!!!

And here it is hanging in it's honored spot on the wall!!!