Making a Dirndl 11 - Apron

先月、ドイツの民族衣装、ディアンドルのワンピースが完成してから早かる～く１か月。
家を売る作業が一段落したところでやっとエプロンに取り掛かりました。ディアンドルにとってのエプロンは、着物の帯みたいなもので、エプロンなくちゃいけないのよ。
長方形の布をよせて紐つけたら完成な簡単なエプロンなんだけど、手縫いの多い方法で作ったのでちまちまと夜なべしました。

It has been way more than a month since I finished my dirndl dress. Now that the process of selling our house has come to a point where we just wait for the closing (which is early October), now I can work on my apron to complete the dirndl.

Above is my apron supplies all cut: sash, main apron (which is just a rectangle), gingham check strip of fabric for the width of my apron fabric, fusible interface for the wast band, and the wast band piece.

While I could use the pattern and instruction of Burda 7057, I did not like it so I decided to make my own. One thing I wanted to do was to gather the apron in a traditional hand-stitch way: rows and rows of equally spaced basting stitches pulled together to create a shirring effect. Hence the need of a piece of gingham check fabric.

Above shows that the long piece of gingham check fabric basted along the width of the apron.
Then I waxed and ironed 11 pieces of threads, for 11 rows of hand-basting.

After a couple of hours of meditating hand-basting, using the square of the check as a guide, the right side looks like this:

Then pulled the end of the threads together to gather the apron to fit the wast band. With the waist band sewn on, the apron looked like this...

which, I was not happy with.
Because my fabric was thin (silk dupioni), and probably it was not wide enough, the shirring looked a bit spacy and I could see the basting stitches between the gathers.

I slept on it, and I still did not like it.

So I smoked, though I had never done smocking before, with a contrasting color thread.

Not the perfect looking smocking, but this would do for me for now. I am now very happy with it.

Hemming is the only thing left for this dirndl journey.