An apron and a button necklace

Yesterday was the first day in a long time that I spent the majority of the day doing what I wanted to do.  How often does that happen?  I realize that I am supposed to make that happen more often in this year of intentionality, but more often than not I do the things that I think should be done or need to be done, not the things that I really want to do.  That is why yesterday was so nice.  I woke up, cleaned the house after our monthly First Friday Family Dinner, started some laundry and then sat down to work on two craft projects.

The first was an apron.  One of the boys in my life just turned 11 and he loves to cook, so I thought that an apron might be an appropriate gift.  Usually when I go over to bake something with the kids, I bring a bunch of aprons, but now he'll have his own.

I had two inspirations for my idea.  The first was to use kitchen towels as my material, something I did when making an apron for Honey a couple years ago.  The second was to include pot holders in the apron.  I saw this lovely tutorial for a beautiful pleated apron with built-in pot holders, and while it doesn't work for an 11 year-old boy, I was pretty sure that I could modify the idea.

I bought two kitchen towels and a set of two pot holders at the Dollar Store.  Total: $3.  I had the coordinating fabric for the ties and pockets already, so I didn't need that.  This would be an inexpensive project day.

The first thing that I did was iron the towels, then fold them in half, iron again, and cut out a semi-circle for the top part of the apron.

I knew that I wanted a loop for the neck and two ties on the side, so I cut out three strips of cloth that were the length of the fabric (40"?) and 3" wide.  I pressed the strips in half lengthwise, "right" sides together, so that I could sew them, flip them right-side-out, and have long ties that were 1.5" wide.

I attached the neck tie (which I modified to 32") to the top of one towel, then attached the side ties and sewed the pot holders to the bottom two corners of what would be the inside of the towel apron.

The pot holders were just over 7" square, so I made two 8" pockets for the outside of the apron to cover the pot holder stitches.

Bunny's making sure I don't mess up.

Once that is done, attach the other towel, leaving a small gap at the bottom to pull everything through and flip the apron right-side-out.  Iron, sew up that little opening, and it's done!

I paired this with a boxed fajita dinner and a boxed cake mix and so the young man is all ready to make a meal for his family.

Project Two: A button necklace.
On Friday night one of my goddaughters (who just turned four) said "I want a necklace like yours!"  I was wearing something I bought at Ann Taylor Loft, a pretty creation of orange and purple gauzy fabric and gold links/chains.  What could I make that would be similar?  I dug around in my craft supplies and found buttons (from clothes we bought over the past decade) and some ribbon and so I decided to make a necklace.

I wanted three button strands, and so I chose buttons of three sizes, seven buttons of the smaller two sizes, eight buttons of the larger size, and started weaving a 6' strand of ribbon through the first row of buttons.  That's when Honey came up and said "What if you used three ribbons for each row of buttons and then braided the ribbons together?"  Of course I thought that was a great idea -- and Honey sat down to help me.

When we were done braiding each row, we knotted the three rows together, braided the three braids, and then knotted the ends.  Ta-da!

You can find the parties that I link to by going to my Party Page.