For gathering eggs, harvesting fruits and vegetables, and on occasion, collecting wildflowers:

MATERIALS

1 yard fabric for apron skirt

1 yard muslin for apron skirt lining

1/2-1 yard contrast fabric for waist band, ties and pockets

1/4 yard complimentary fabric for pocket lining

1/2-3/4 yard sturdy ribbon

2 buttons

thread

DIRECTIONS

1. Measure and cut contrast fabric for waistband. This should be 10 inches wide by approximately 21 inches long. Adjust the length according to your waist–each end should reach each side of your waist plus a little extra for seam allowance.

2. Iron waistband in half, lengthwise. Open it up and fold each long end toward the middle and press. Fold the whole length in half again and press. It should look like a really big piece of bias tape.

3. Measure two more 10 inch strips the width of your contrast fabric. These will be your ties. Repeat the folding and ironing process as you did with the waistband. Open out folds and sew ties to each end of waistband. Press seams.

4. Determine the length of your apron and trim or mark hem accordingly. The width of the fabric will be gathered and should need no trimming. Once you have determined the length of the apron, mark placement of rick rack, pin and stitch.

5. Measure and cut pockets from contrast fabric. They should be 7 inches wide by 9 inches tall. Pin and stitch rick rack across pocket, approximately 1-2 inches above bottom seam line.

6. Measure and cut pocket lining from complimentary fabric. These should also be 7 inches by 9 inches.

7. Stitch pocket and pocket lining together, right sides facing, leaving an opening at the bottom for turning. Trim corners, turn and press.

8. Fold down top edge of pocket and press. Affix button to center of pocket flap, sewing through flap and front of pocket to hold flap in place. Repeat with other pocket.

9. Pin pocket to apron front, 5 inches from outer edge of apron and up to 12″ from top edge. (Move it closer to top of apron for easier access.)

10. Topstitch pocket to apron front, being careful to not catch front flap of pocket.

11. Cut length of muslin to match size of apron front. Pin muslin to apron front, right sides facing. Stitch on three sides, leaving top open. Trim seam allowance and corners, leaving 1 1/2-2 inch seam allowance on bottom hem–this will help reinforce your buttonholes.

12. Turn and press. Topstitch the sides and bottom.

13. Gather top edge of apron. Pin raw edge of waistband to apron top, matching side edges of apron and waistband seams. Baste together. Stitch along foldline of waistband. Fold waistband over gathered edge of apron and press.

14. Open out edges of ties. Fold each corner into a triangle and press. Fold length in half again and press. Repeat with other tie end.

15. Beginning at the tip of one tie, topstitch all the way along tie, across folded over waistband and along second tie to the end.

16. Fold waistband in half to find center and mark with pin. Make a vertical buttonhole on each side of the center.

17. Using a straight pen to protect your buttonhole seams, rip open the buttonhole with a seam ripper. You will be ripping through a lot of layers of fabric, so be careful!

18. Feed your ribbon through the buttonholes until an even length is coming through both sides. Hand sew a simple “X” to hold the ribbon in place.

19. Make a horizontal buttonhole at each bottom corner or your apron, being careful again to protect your seams with a straight pin before ripping open the hole.

20. Find the center at the bottom of your apron and mark. Make one vertical buttonhole on each side of the center.

The full length of this apron makes it perfect for kneeling on in the garden. To gather it up for harvesting, simply feed the ribbon through the button holes along the bottom and tie a bow.

Please remember that this tutorial is offered for your personal enjoyment. Please do not sell any products made or inspired by this tutorial.

Ben returned from town yesterday with boxes full of fabric. Aunt Kitty says he has no taste at all; there’s no other explanation for the purples and oranges he came home with. She says they’ll be suitable for nothing but work and I’m to expect to spend tomorrow stitching up some gathering aprons. I groaned and told her I promised to spend the next TEN evenings sewing if only she would let me have the daytime for myself.

“That’s fine, Tevis,” she said, “but I expect to see your needle threaded before the sun goes down. And don’t you be leaving off your usual chores.”

Well, there’s two things I should have considered before I made that promise and the first and most important thing is that Ben forgot to pick up Aunt Kitty’s chocolate when he was at the grocer’s in town. Ben whispered to me one time about how chocolate is Aunt Kitty’s kindness medicine, and when she gets short on chocolate her temper gets short too.

The other thing I should have considered is how the sun has a mean habit of going down before the day’s really over. After my chores were done, I had a mind to do some spying on the new boy across the creek, but I got distracted by the wildflowers coming up on the hillside. They fell into my hands, really, a great big bunch of them–shooting stars and bleeding hearts and dandelions–and that’s just what I would have told Ben but I thought I should save him the pain and trouble of reminding me how I’m cutting their life short by yanking them out of God’s green earth. So I thought instead I would take them as a sort of welcoming bouquet to that boy across the creek. I whistled for Pilot and he fell into step beside me, his tongue wagging at the chance to dig up gophers on the other side.

I was in sight of that big yellow farmhouse when it occured to me that flowers really aren’t the thing for a boy and maybe I should go back and catch him some pollywogs from the creek instead. By that time Pilot was shoulders-deep in a hole and whined at me when I called him to come.

“Well stay here, then,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

But of course by the time I fetched a jar from the house and filled it up with pollywogs, then ran back to get another jar for water ’cause Ben would just be beside himself if I left those wildflowers just laying in the grass to die–well by the time I got back to Pilot’s hole, Pilot was no longer in it.

I found him a couple hours later digging furiously under a manzanita bush and when I grumbled at him, “Pilot, you bad dog, why don’t you come when I call you?” he just looked at me over her shoulder, his nose turned red-brown from the dirt, and there was nothing sheepish about his expression. I swear he was thinking, “Now why would I want to come with you when I’m having such a fine time right here?”

I had to pull him home by the scruff of the neck, stopping by the creek long enough to pour out the pollywogs. I confess I poured the wildflowers into the creek too, ’cause I didn’t figure I needed any help getting in trouble this time since the sun was already well below the horizon. I rushed through the door with an apology already flying out of my mouth.

Aunt Kitty harumphed and said I should consider the apostle Peter next time I’m thinking about making promises I ain’t going to be keeping, and in the mean time I could plan to spend the next ten days indoors mending and cleaning and ironing. Aunt Kitty knows how I hate ironing, and I’m just certain that’s why she carried out that big stack of ugly fabric and plunked it down right in front of me as she said the word.

Me, I think Peter more than made up for it in the end. And I’m sure I will too. But in the meantime I’ll be ironing.

A boy moved into the house across the creek today. I saw him when I was out scattering feed to the chickens. I called out to him–”Hey, boy!”–but he didn’t answer, just turned his shoulder and sprinted up the hillside.

Now it’s true we don’t have a mirror in the house, but Aunt Kitty never looked at me funny before I walked out the door this morning and Ben, well, I guess Ben never notices much of anything except maybe the smell when Aunt Kitty’s making Toad in the Hole for supper. But still, I think that boy must just be weird. What kind of boy runs away from an itty bitty girl like me? A weird kind, that’s what.

While the chickens were busy pecking at their feed, I turned up six eggs in the coop, all of them white. The arauconas have taken to nesting in the haystack again, so I spent the rest of the morning scrambling over hay bales hunting for more eggs. I only turned up three more, and one mean hen who seems to be planning to sit on hers till they hatch. (Never mind that our rooster got castrated last year on account of he kept attacking Aunt Kitty’s legs and putting holes in her stockings.) But who am I to argue with an angry hen? I like my eyes in their sockets and my skin in one piece, thank you very much.

I just set those nine eggs in my apron and told Aunt Kitty there weren’t no more to be found.