Cover Up at Epilogue Studio

It won’t be long before May 18th and the Spring opening of Epilogue Studio and Gallery in Browns Flat NB is upon us. We made it through the January hurdle and the countdown is on.

I am usually a paint spattered mess after a day working at the studio. Probably not the look I want to have when tourists arrive to look around for possible treasures to take home. I needed to come up with a more professional work look for painting, in-between studio visitors. So… how about covering myself with a drop cloth? Really!! Canvas drop cloths are used, by and large, to protect floors, furniture and larger surfaces. I figured if they could do all of that, then part of one should be able to help me out.

Have you ever heard of a mobius apron? It is often referred to as a Japanese apron, or a pinafore apron.. but with a twist; literally!

"A mobius strip is a one sided surface that is constructed from a rectangle by holding one end fixed, rotating the opposite end through 180 degrees, and joining it to the first end." (Merriam Webster)

Here is where the apron connection comes into play… a mobius apron has only one edge and one hole, and most importantly for me, no strings attached! I love that! You just pop it over your head and away you go. The broader shoulder straps and the fact that it is not hanging around your neck makes it comfortable and almost like a dress or tunic. I thought it would be the perfect solution for protecting my clothes while painting at the studio. I have quite a collection now of paint-spattered clothes, and I am hoping when I open up the studio to the public in the Spring, I will be able to appear a little more presentable than I often do now!

So I cut out all the pieces and stencilled the fabric with Annie Sloan graphite ChalkPaint and random stencils I had on hand. I figured if you could stencil a pillow top and curtains, why not an apron? Now it doesn’t look so much like a drop cloth!

This is the apron folded up, the way it will look when finished.

I had lots of fun rooting through my stencil collection.

Next, I cut and sewed a bias tape from the leftover cloth that had not been stencilled and applied it to the edges. That was the hard part. The fabric folded up into bias tape is pretty stiff!

But the end result was so much nicer than purchased generic tape. Now to attach the shoulders, opposite to opposite.

Final step was to sew the shoulders together with a nice tidy French seam.

How about that! Front view:

Back View:

No strings attached and I now have a great cover up for messy studio work.

The only downside to this project is that you really need to have a sturdy machine and needle to sew canvas weight fabric. I have a pretty good machine, but by the end of the project, I had to take it in for repairs as I had messed it up with the heavy duty work I had put it through. But the machine got repaired, thanks to Terry at Saint John Sewing Centre and I purchased a new machine; the Singer Scholastic that should be able to motor through just about anything I am planning to throw at it. I have a couple of projects in mind, that I am hoping will be available sometime this summer at Epilogue. Hope to see you there!

Imagine this without the snow!