Lorelei apron

Here's my first of what will probably be a few projects from A Is for Apron. It's the Lorelei apron and I made it as a birthday gift for my mother-in-law. The project went fairly well. I had to do a bit of improvising with it, though. The pattern calls for 1/4 yard for the neck strap and pockets, but it wasn't enough fabric. I was able to piece the neck (instead of cutting it on the fold, as the pattern called for) and then I lined the pockets with extra of the main fabric. Not a big deal. I eliminated the ricrac because I didn't have any on hand and I wanted to whip this up quickly.

This project also represents my first foray into making my own true bias tape, not the fake stuff I've made before. I used my new bias-tape makers and they were great. I somehow made way too much, so have a lot of double-fold 1/4" of that cute bias sitting around now. Oh well. I followed the bias-tape making instructions from Easy Bias-Covered Curves and it was fine. I pieced my strips together at an angle so the seam wouldn't be vertical (like I do with my quilt binding) and then tried to press the seam open. That didn't really work--when the tape came through the bias-tape maker the seams all pressed one way anyway. So, note to self for future projects.

I made a couple of other mistakes, like applying the binding to the wrong side (or, actually, the right side) of the body first, binding the whole thing before attaching the straps, making the strap points both point in the same direction... Minor stuff. Little things that I can chalk up to a learning experience.

And now for the ubiquitous "weekend update" part of my Monday post...

Our weather is warm today but was a little cooler over the weekend and last week. The good thing? This results in more kitty snuggles, as seen above. Cuteness.

On Friday Rob and I saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which was really good and probably in my top 3 of recent Woody Allen movies. On Saturday we went out for breakfast, walked around, ran errands, and I went solo to a cookout my friends were hosting. It was overrun with squealing children and giant doggies and was a bit overwhelming for me, a kid-not-liker and cat-owner, but it was really nice to see my friends and meet some new people. Yesterday we just stayed home and did our own things. I made some progress on two different works-in-progress, which I will post on later this week. Last night we watched Belle de Jour, which was interesting but not my favorite Bunuel. I really like his work, but was a little "meh" about this one.

We also watched a bunch of the Olympics, like every other human being on the face of the earth. I saw some crazy sabre fighting that looked like laser tag with fencing swords. It kinda freaked me out and I went back to watching a Shear Genius marathon on Bravo. Much more comprehensible.