A gift for the "Laundry lady"

the DH does a lot of "messy" crafting out there in the garage ---

working with glues and stains and paints and sealer

all just the sort of stuff that won't come out of the shirt or pants de jour if he doesn't have a rag handy and he needs to wipe his hands or just the stuff splatters

before Christmas he found a very cool shop apron in a catalog, and I thought about just buying it for him, but $38 for an apron just seemed excessive (I mean for that it should do some sanding or painting or something on it's own!)

so, right after we got back from our Christmas trip, I picked up some heavy denim and a pattern (as a starting point) to make him a custom designed shop apron

and here it is in all its glory --- each and every hem and seam double (or triple) stitched

and that top pocket -- the one that was just supposed to be a "pocket" -- uh, that's all stitched in rows (much like the pencil cases I did before Christmas) so he can stick a pencil and a number of drill bits in there

he pronounced it "good!" and wore it for most of the afternoon

nice to get another project done!

so now I'm working on finishing my apron -- it is basically all stitched together, the pocket is attached and partitioned but now there is the binding (all the way around!) to be done, and because I hate store bought bias tape, I'm of course cutting my own from the same fabric, and it has to be stitched together before I can continue with the applying part -- I'm hoping to have it all finished today

this is the button I fished out of the button box -- one that has no matching ones in the box, so its a good one to use on something that only needs one button!

yesterday afternoon I cut the fabric for all of the aspen tress in the tree project --- I still need to cut the quilt batting for the first two --- so I should be able to start working on these either today or tomorrow

and I have come up with some very cool patterning for the sashiko project too

rollin' along!