Blinking Light Gallery

I've got some sweet aprons and more for sale at the Blinking Light Gallery in Plainfield, Vermont. Stop by when you are in town to eat at Positive Pie, The River Run, or visiting your funky mid-Vermont-dwelling friends.

Someone recently told me these are called "hostess aprons." Well, that does rather go along with comments made by some of the older ladies I meet at outdoor markets that they are "too nice" to use as an apron. Maybe that's why most of them have sold to young women visiting from New York City and Boston. (They never say they are "too nice") This pink gingham one is made from the remains of a sheet I bought to back a quilt many years ago. Vintage green/yellow shirt collar, new designer fabric depicting Mexican folk masks, and a stripe at the bottom and pocket of a wonderful vintage bamboo fabric given to me by my 85-year-old neighbor, Betty. She says is was her mother's curtains, but it must be very high quality, because it doesn't feel nearly that old. I would have guessed circa late 1960s. But I suppose her mother could have still been around then...

Classic cherrys print apron: I cut the skirt fabric on the bias. I often like to do that with plaids or stripes or other vertical prints to give it a bit more energy and interest. Recycled blue/green/turquoise button-down collar, and the waistband is new designer fabric that's a great reproduction (or at least inspired by) of a 1930's kitchen calico. Actually, I bought enough to make my new kitchen curtains out of it. Before that my kitchen curtain where the kittens and fishies on the pillows below, and before that they were the cherrys on yellow/white plaid in this apron.

This black and white fabric was a hippy skirt I got at a thrift shop or rummage sale or something. Can't recall the exact source. I think it sets off this wonderful blue/green vintage watercolor-y floral print very nicely. Orange collar from a linen Anne Taylor sportswear shirt from the early 1990s.
















And here's the gallery. You can see it from Route 2 just over the rise at, what else, the blinking light. There is currently a cool show up of welded steel sculpture and colorful paintings on canvas, plus all the member work. Pictures of my display are below: 4-Way-Entry Bags, HotHolders, and hostess aprons, plus a basket of pillows, all in the fiber section, as you can see.




I think this is one of my best aprons. {I'm sorry the pics are so dark. You won't be able to get the magic color combination unless you see it in person. I think my old digital camera is on it's last legs.} The skirt fabric is a bright red, almost orange, with a China doll-pagoda-carriage-lantern print in black, yellow, blue and pink. I inherited this from my mom's fabric collection. She bought it in the 1980s, I think, and never made anything out of it. I've had it for years, waiting for just the right application. When I started making these aprons, this fabric finally found it's calling. I had enough to make three - the other two have different collars and waistbands. One went to a new home in NYC, one is here at the Blinking Light Gallery, and one was getting a serious eye-balling by my LA cousin, Julie, when she saw it in Maine last month. She bought loads of HotHolders and a 4-Way-Entry Bag instead. The trim on this one is a light turquoise button down collar and some new 1940s style nursery fabric. I got these bubble-headed little gamboling fawns on lavender in a pack of vintage reproduction prints and I had a total aversion to it until I put it in combination with this red skirt and turquoise collar. Somehow it just works and now I like it.