A Project Detour: Zero Waste

 

 

This week I had intended to start working on my Lady Detective outfit for January, but I ended up taking  a small sewing detour.  While putting away all the Christmas decorations I came across an old tree skirt that I had intended to turn into place mats. . . and didn't.  The tree skirt had come to the marriage with my husband and was both adorable and sentimental, but too small for our tree and didn't match the decor in our house.  I wanted to keep it, but to re-purpose the fabric into something that we would get more use out of, hence the place mat idea.  As it turns out, I don't really need holiday place mats either, what I needed was an apron.  

 

This is one of my favorite vintage patterns.  I love that it covers my chest as well as my waist--since my messes splash all over.  I already have one in blue gingham, but frankly, it's appalling that I didn't have a holiday version considering how much holiday baking (not to mention turkey & ham wrestling) I do.

 

Here is the final version:

The tree skirt was double-sided, so the apron is double-sided.  The red ric-rac was from the original skirt, but the gold ribbon (a remnant of a different project) was added.  

 

With some creative pattern placement, this was all that was left of the original tree skirt:

 

 

And as I finished up with this project, I realized that this was perfect for  November's Historical Sew Monthly theme of "Zero Waste."  Excellent.  It will be nice to have some breathing room as the next holiday season begins.  One box ticked. . . very far in advance.