An Apron, An Oven Mitt, and Macaroni

Well, I thought I would share some of the crafting I've been up to for Christmas this year. I made the apron and matching mitt for my niece in Jacksonville. She is getting a play kitchen for Christmas this year, and no proper cook can be without an apron. She's still kind of young for all this (she turned two just a few months ago), but she has an unnatural love of cooking supplies even at such a young age. I was able to visit her and the rest of my family in November, and it was so good to see all of them. Livi is growing so fast. She has officially passed from that baby stage to full on toddler, and she completely melts my heart. One of her favorite games when we were all sitting around the dinner table is to take uncooked macaroni shells and pass them out one by one to everyone at the table. She's very fair and tries to make sure everyone has the same amount. I bought her a little play doctor kit for her birthday while I was there and my sister informed me that she loved it, especially emptying out all the doctor stuff and filling the case with macaroni and carrying it around with her. So I'm sure those pockets in the apron will be quite full, just maybe not with cooking utensils, but macaroni... lots of macaroni.

It was a bit of a challenging project considering its simple construction. I was given her height (36 in.), but I had to compare some of my own dimensions to my height to figure out the rest of the proportions. I made all of it a little big, as she will hopefully be playing with the kitchen set for several years, and I wanted the apron and mitt to fit for a few as well. The oven mitt is just basically a smaller version of one I have. I picked out the fabric at a local quilting shop and fell in love with it. I wanted to line the mitt with the same yellow as is used in the apron, so I made my own bias tape (a first for me). As a side note, the oven mitt is actually functional. Not that anyone would hand a hot dish to a two year old, but when she gets older and grows into the whole thing a little more, it will work. I bought Insul-bright to line it along with regular cotton batting. You have to make sure not to use any polyester batting in a pot holder because it could melt, and that would be very painful.

I will post another craft I should have finished up after Christmas. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas...eat well, and enjoy the long weekend!