Homesteader Swiss Army Apron
Since planting a spring garden is out of the question I decided to just plan for next year. It’s about as productive as I can be right now, just planning. I thought about planting a small herb garden just to give me something green but I don’t have a yard here. Literally my yard is all concrete and it seemed silly to invest in a bunch of pots and soil when we move in 2 months. Not to mention the local stores still don’t have much of a selection still (I keep checking because the itch is real). So since a garden is out for now, lets do something in. Hopefully that play on words makes sense.
The weather here has been so hit or miss lately that I have been cooped up inside. It is hard to want to go anywhere and explore when the wind is trying to pick you up and carry you away and the rain can’t make up its mind. So I decided to do something indoors and wait out mother nature. I decided to make a multipurpose apron for myself while I am stuck inside.
Apron Requirements
I have never had a kitchen apron. I don’t like things around my neck and finding a half apron I liked never worked out. So I have always just done without. So my first apron requirement was that it would be a half apron that could work in the kitchen? Check.
My next requirement was that the half apron would also work as a garden apron. It would be long enough that if I wore it, it could protect my clothes when planting, watering, ect. I have had many times in the garden with the intention of watering only to have muddy splash back. Or bending down to pull a few weeds you saw to tip forward and fall on my knees. I don’t like having to change my outfit all the time but going out and doing things caked in mud isn’t ideal. Half apron that can work in the garden? Check.
Harvest Apron Requirements
I knew I wanted a harvest apron too. Something that could hold all the vegetables as I pick them and still leave me hands free. I wanted plenty of room in there because I grow more than cherry tomatoes. My squash last year were very prolific and I could harvest a bucket full every other day at least. So it needed to be able to hold plenty of larger crops. Big harvest pouch? Check.
I wanted the harvest apron to be able to pour out the produce easily too so the way it fastened together was important and I wanted the option where I could dump everything out (this idea is more ideal for something like a root vegetable harvest) to save time rather than having to pull everything out one at a time. I also wanted it to be able to completely unfold for easy access to more fragile produce for separation and sorting. Easy access harvest? Check.
Lastly, it was important to me to include an egg pouch. I know that getting egg hens is very important to me and only a matter of time (not that I’m counting >.>) Not to mention I have read many complaints about people putting eggs in their harvest aprons and making accidental pocket omelettes. That definitely sounds like something I would do so if I can tweak a pattern to prevent that from happening I might as well. Egg harvest pockets? Check.
One More Requirement
One other thing that this apron had to have and this may very well be the MOST IMPORTANT requirement… This all needed to be one apron. I love multi use things that do more than one job. Also, I didn’t want to need all of these different aprons to keep track of. I just want one apron that does it all.
Let me tell you, that is exactly what I got!!! I am so happy with how this apron turned out and I can’t wait to break it in. For now only the kitchen side is seeing much use but soon, soon it will be covered in soil and I couldn’t be happier.
I was also able to make a matching garden hat to my garden apron which makes me very happy in a cheesy way. It will keep the sun out and I will look cute doing it. It’s wide brimmed to make sure the sun really keeps out of my face which was important to me and is shaped in a way to accommodate my hair without sitting on my neck too much. I usually wear a visor but my hair gets so hot sitting in the sun but a traditional sun hat has a brim that goes all the way around. This hat gives me the best of both worlds in my opinion. Basically it’s a visor hat and I’m in love with it.
Added Bonus
I had enough scrap material left over after cutting out all the pieces for my apron and hat that I was able to make my daughter a reversible garden/kitchen apron too. She is tickled pink about it and loves helping out so I am just as excited for her apron to get broken in too.
Her apron is an around the neck apron but she is happy with it. Not to mention she’s notorious for wiping her hands on her chest/thighs so this design covers both.
Materials
I don’t have patterns for everything. Mostly I went to Pinterest for inspiration since finding exactly what I was looking for wasn’t panning out. I searched for sun hats and narrowed it down to 2. I chose the free pattern because what did I have to lose?! The other pattern was $12 and I didn’t even know how it would fit my head and it seemed like to much to invest in a maybe.
I looked at sooooooo many aprons and read several blogs about others aprons. I tried following their patterns but I was very confused and the posts were so old that I knew posting a comment and expecting a response for trouble shooting was out of the question. So I decided to wing it just from looking at several pictures and trying to merge them into one apron.
For materials I used 4 different patterned fabrics all of the same material. It is a thin canvas cotton type fabric. I used an herb/cheese fabric for the kitchen apron. A garden fabric for the garden hat and garden apron. A heart fabric for the egg pouch and hat ribbon. And a brown fabric for trim/lining/misc.
I purchased 1 meter each of the kitchen and brown fabric. I got a meter and a half of the garden fabric since I knew I wanted to make a matching hat. And I got a half meter of the heart fabric since it was only going to be used for a small accent.
Hopefully you are just as inspired as I was to make your own apron. What requirements must your apron have?