Sewing: old sheets + dye = new apron

(Yes, more sewing. Suck it, haterz)

So! I have been thinking about these sheets, which have been sitting in our linen closet for five years. We’ve used them a few times, but they are hand-me-downs from a friend with a girl. We have no girl children and our bedroom’s color scheme is not pink. Therefore they are pretty much extraneous.

So I have been thinking and thinking of how to reuse such a great amount of yardage and !bing! realized that they don’t have to be pink! I bought two boxes of RIT dye in Scarlet during our grocery shop a few weeks ago and last weekend finally got the chance to dye the sheets and two pillowcases. I sprinkled in a little Yellow and some Tan, aiming for a toned-down tomato/paprika color, which I thought would go well in our slaty-blue living room or bedroom.

Alas, red + yellow + tan on top of pink equals merely a darker pink.

Still. The solid color sheet didn’t take the color too well but the flannel took it excellently, resulting in a decidedly girly yet pleasingly saturated salmon. I washed it and dried it and took it straight upstairs to the sewing room and cut another Lotta Jansdotter apron out of them. The apron was designed to be reversible, so now I could make an embellished, reversable version, and if I bonked it up I would be out exactly zero dollars. Schwing! Plus our linen closet has a few inches of extra room and I have an extra apron for when the first is in the wash. You just can’t lose.

Anyhoodle, here it is.

I also found a book called Romantic Home Sewing at the library today which has an apron pattern in it. It’s quite similar to the one I made for Owen, though the proportions are a little different and it calls for cotton tape for straps instead of self straps. I think I may try that one next. I still have a sheet and a half left.