The Romance of Aprons

I've begun some new chapters in my life, and I'm finding that they are very good things indeed.  I've started creating with some abandon those things which are important or special to me, and I'm sharing them with the world through my online shop at Horsefeather Nuggets at Etsy.com.  While this is by no means a runaway success in financial or sales terms, it is a good way for me to share my creative spirit with a broader audience, including you :)

I am also spending a lot of time on Biblical study, something I've wanted to do for quite some time, but found difficult while I was still raising small children.  While I'm not here to bash anyone over the head with my beliefs and convictions, since they are such a core part of who I am both as a person and as an artist/craftsperson, reference to them will sometimes necessarily and unashamedly creep into my posts.  It is not my intention to offend anyone, however I will not withdraw my beliefs or convictions to save someone from being offended either. 

That being said, I have also started curating treasuries on Etsy as well, and have found myself wanting to share much more than the 177 charactors that I'm limited to there.  I am not a "tweet" person, I am much more an expositonary force in personality lol.  So I will undoubtably be writing much more here, and sharing the very special treasuries I've created. 

My first treasury is titled "The Romance of Aprons", and is a beautiful mix of both modern and vintage styles, patterns, and colors.  The history of aprons goes back centuries, affording craftsmen an extra layer of protection for their clothing while they worked and usually pockets for holding their tools of the trade.  Aprons for women also afforded this protection of their clothing, but also served as a working tool, whether something to wipe their hands on while they did chores, or a convenient basket tied to their waist for gathering and carrying things from one place to another.  Depictions of aprons can be found in art renditions of the Middle Ages showing women using their large aprons to gather the harvest or as a sort of portable towel to wipe their hands on while cooking or doing household chores.  The amount and type of fabric used in the construction of the apron would often give the casual observer clues as to the woman's wealth (fabric cost a lot of money, and a longer apron, a fuller skirted apron, a pinafore or an apron with ruffles, bows, pockets, anything that used extra fabric denoted a wealthier status).  An apron made from calico or muslin verses an apron constructed from "homespun" was also a designation of wealth and status, and the amount and intricacy of any needlework served not only as a showcase for a woman's talents, it also alluded to the amount of "leisure time" a woman had at her disposal to devote to such pasttimes.  For women, the taking off of the apron in the evening was the ritual of the end of the workday for her, the time when the household had been taken care of for the day and a time when she could pursue more leisurely activities such as writing in a journal, reading, doing needlework or, if she were fortunate enough to have a musical instrament, a time to relax creating her own entertainment.  It was strictly a women's domain to wear this style of apron, and a sign of her femineity.  It was also an expression of who she was, as there were cultural and folk styles of apron, uniform aprons, formal hostess aprons and utility aprons, and aprons easily lent themselves to all manner of personal embellishment, be it embroidery, ruffles, bows, pockets, and the list goes on. 

In the 1960's and 1970's, with the advent of the Women's Rights Movement, aprons were one of the many things mistakenly thought to show women's bondage and were summarily discarded en masse along with anything that could be connected to a woman's historical role of homemaker and caretaker, and so has remained a lost expression of a woman's femineity and beauty until recent years, when it's utility and ability to facilitate style and self-expression has been rediscovered by a new generation, but with some signifigant differences. 

While aprons have come back into style, today's aprons seem to be mostly mass produced and limited in styles and colors, while aprons of past generations were usually among a girl's first sewing projects.   The diversity of styles, embellishments, fabrics and patterns seems to have been diminished, at least for the time being, although I have seen some progress in this area recently. 

An apron is simply an apron, but the history and tradition of aprons has a very long and storied past, full of nuance and romance, the story and history of women.