Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Easter Post II

To finish my personal Easter roundup, I'd like to say a few words about the gift I made for my sister. In fact, the gift actually has a story.

It started on New Year's Eve 2009. We are not into New Year's Eve parties at all and decided to stay at home. From a I borrowed all ten seasons of Friends on DVD. We started with the first season on New Year's Eve and kept watching (last night we watched the last episode of season eight). In one episode in season seven, Monica bakes christmas candy. For baking she wears a pink apron. Apparently, Birgit fell in love with the pink apron. The scene was included into the intro of season seven so whenever Birgit saw the intro she started moaning about the pretty apron. I took a screen shot of the apron as it is shown in into of season seven:


I did some online research to find out whether someone else already noticed this apron and maybe knows where to get it. Of course, I wasn't successful. It came to my mind that it could not be too hard to sew an apron myself. I looked online for a suitable pattern and got lucky on Etsy. Jona Giammalva offered the almost perfect pattern. I gave it a try. I did everything I could to get Birgit out of the apartment for a weekend to have enough time and space to make the apron. I got some pink vintage fabric from my mum, but with now proper table to cut the fabric and a horrible pair of scissors this turned out to be rather challenging. Making the bias tape turned out to be an even greater challenge. Did I mention that I have no real experience in sewing and tried to do this on my own? The bias tape was meant to be rather slim and the fabric proofed to be pretty stiff. I'm also not too great in ironing. I think my little Ikea ironing board is only meant to be used to iron sleeves. I don't have any larger ironing board. So I set on my cold floor with the tiny board and the stiff fabric and tried to produce a halfway acceptable bias tape. After about three or four hours I gave up. I called my mom, stuffed all the pieces of the apron in a big bag and announced to come over as soon as possible to have her help me. The slim bias tape really freaked me out. Actually I did not even want a slim bias tape. Remember, I said "almost" perfect pattern?
When I came home and showed the pieces and pattern to my mom I decided that the bias tape has to become wider. Actually, I just wanted my mom to give me a little help and show me how to do it. Plans were changed though. We got a phone call and suddenly we expected nine more persons for our Easter brunch. I kinda panicked because I wanted everyone to have one of my knitted egg cozies and so far I had only finished four of them. So my mom took over the sewing of the apron while I sat there to knit some more egg cozies (in the end I only had seven of them).
In the end, Birgit's gift is handmade. Not really by me though. I am a little upset about that, but I'm determined to try it again some other time. Nevertheless, I believe she really likes her new apron. She can actually wear both sides. Ok, it does not really look like Monica's apron, but it is pretty close:


Actually, the reverse side looks more like the original apron, but I can't really find a photo of it. 

I think now I really rounded up my Easter Holidays. 

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