Miss J's Apron--3rd finish 2nd Quarter FAL (2018)

The embroidered "J"

After completing Miss K's apron, it was time to tackle Miss J's apron. If the base fabric looks similar. It is. I took one tea towel and cut it half. I used similar fabrics for the ruffles. About five years ago, our guild had a monthly strip exchange. Often, there were at least two strips of the same fabric.

These strips came from several different strip exchanges. As I was putting the strips together, I thought it would be funny if these actually came from the same person's stash! I'll never know!

Miss J loves animals. Lately, she has been drawn to butterflies so I decided she needed a butterfly on her apron along with her initial.

I selected a "J" from my embroidery software. I used the software to stitch a fill design inside the J. I am getting better at understanding how to hoop my design although, I'm still not quite there yet!

Embroidered butterflies

My original thought was to embroider the design on organza and then applique the butterfly to the apron. I wanted it to be three dimensional; but, I couldn't figure out how to achieve my idea. In the end, I decided to embroider directly to the tea towel. I did it twice. This decision to embroider directly to the towel was not good. . .twice!

This design was too dense for the tea towel. Even though I used four layers of water soluble stabilizer, the background of the tea towel puckered. This was a great learning experience. I'm now thinking that most of the "designs" in my software are too dense to stitch on anything but a thick item like a bag.

Finished apron

I considered hand stitching a swirl to mimic each butterfly's flight path. I decided, however, that I had learned enough with this project and I stopped.

The good news is that Miss J LOVES her apron. We had a scavenger hunt to find it. Then we had to bake some blueberry muffins to see how well the apron performed. It performed well! (The muffins were delicious!!!)

This apron and the one for her sister have been waiting for a finish for a long time. . .I'm thinking at least three years. This embroidery stuff sure manages to easily stymie me. In a bit, I'll try improving my embroidery skills again. I'm planning to work on a quilt project next.

This was goal number three on my 2nd Quarter Finish-A-Long list and my third finish for the quarter.  (I used half a yard of fabric from my stash. So I now have used a net of 8 yards of fabric from my stash and have 42 yards more to go to meet my goal of using 50 yards from my stash in 2018!)

Miss J says, "Is it time to cook?"