Apron Strings: Ties to the Past {Part I}

You are cordially invited to an exclusive showing of Apron Strings: Ties to the Past, a virtual tour from the comfort of your chair!

As I mentioned in a past post, I have been heavily involved in putting together a museum exhibition focusing on aprons.  Part of the show is a nationally traveling exhibit from ExhibitsUSA, which will be a separate post .  The other part of the exhibition is a spotlight on a local collector...which just happened to be me!  All of the items contained in the cases are from "my collection". I also assisted in designing many aspects and plans for the show (such as the flyer seen above). The museum's curator knew I had an interest in curating along with some past experience from doing my fine art degree exit show. 

  

So let's get this apron party started!

This is the view coming into the space.  "I" greet the visitors with a raised rolling pin.

Another view showing part of the left side.  (There are many more views in upcoming posts.)

I did a total of seven cases.  I was going with an idea inspired from vintage embroidery dish towels where housewives set each day for a particular chore.

I will take you on a tour of the cases, each day of the week!

~*Cleaning Day*~

The largest case in the exhibit I loosely based on the theme of cleaning.  The mannequin is wearing a scarf on her head, hence she is cleaning. I don't own any vintage cleaning apparatus deals or packaging...yet.  So that's as far as 'cleaning' went.  (Except for me cleaning the cases.)

Other items in this case are kinda a hodge podge of cookie cutters, a cook booklet, a vintage apron sewing pattern , and of course aprons!  In each case I chose aprons with colors or styles that looked well together.  This case has a black, yellow, pink thing going on.

To the right you can see the apron I got several years ago which has attached potholders to the sides.

~*Sewing Day*~

The sewing day case is my favorite.  I think it turned out looking the best and is able to be viewed from all angles.  Trying to design cases to be viewed in the round is a real challenge.

I really like how there are so many different areas of the show that can be viewed from all angles.

I love the bakelite foot pedal from the sewing machine so I left it exposed.

The additional items include a 1950's Singer Sewing Machine, several wooden thread spools, packages of rick rack, and an instructional paper on making a 'Curvet' apron.  I really like the color combo with these aprons.  You may have noticed that  a non-vintage apron made it into this case.  The Lime Head Cutie was an apron made by me as part of the Tie One On Sew-a-Long.

~*Ironing Day*~

The Ironing Day case was my second favorite designed.  It can be viewed from all sides as the Sewing Day case.  I was also going for a child's play additional theme.  I was able to borrow from the museum's curator (she collects vintage toys like I do!) a vintage child's ironing board and toy irons to really set the look.  

I also included in the case some of the doll furniture from my dollhouse.

I put two children aprons in this case and a few smaller ones draped across the top of the ironing board.  See the gingham apron better in this post.
  

You can also see the little itty bitty pie tin  and the spatula and mini food box from my Easy Bake Oven party. There is my little plastic dollhouse.

 Also used Fluffy Ruffles.  I thought it really worked well having aprons, a mom and daughter, and then a doll dressed in an apron too on the cover.   Off to the left is a reproduction I made of vintage paper dolls that featured them in aprons with specifics of ironing day, wash day, cleaning day, etc. on each page.  Talk about working perfectly! Example:

I printed out extras of the paper doll aprons and kinda scattered them on the floor of the case.

~*Wash Day*~  

The Wash Day case was one of two that were part of the preview show.

Seen in this case are vintage plastic clothes pins and an apron sewing pattern.

The blue-green floral apron can be seen better here. 

In the wash tub, but not seen in these photos, is a birthday apron that was made for me from vintage sheets.  It is more visible from the back of the case.

~*Baking Day*~

This case is based on a Baking Day theme.

I included vintage rooster canisters, cookie cutters, a hand-knitted pot holder, and a Vogart embroidery pattern featuring fun designs for kitchen towels such as "Stubburn as a Mule".  

~*Marketing Day*~

Let's go shopping!

For this case I included some vintage food packaging and green stamps.

Another view.

~*Hostess Day*~

Although 'Hostess Day' is not an official day of the week activity, I thought it still could work.

In this case are several hostess-ish aprons, a vintage dress, vintage paper coasters with an illustration of a woman wearing an apron, hostess and party cook booklets, plastic floral party picks, and a punch glass.

This case gave me the hardest time designing.  I think it had to do with it's size.  It is very wide but not tall.

Here is a weird down shot of it.

I can't begin to tell you the amount of work that I put into designing these cases and show.  I spent so much time scouring through my things, some packed up in storage and hard to get to, looking for the perfect thing.  I wanted every case to have some item that was kinda scattered to fill the case floor space properly: cookie cutters, coasters, green stamps, paper dolls, wooden spools, and clothes pins.  Some of the displaying items I used from the museum, such as the mannequin,  I had to rebuild her boobs with one of my own bras.  I had to clean all of the cases and apply a 3 part scratch repair solution to the top sections because they were in bad shape. I spent several hours writing my bio and a whole day doing the photo shot of me with the rolling pin along with photo editing.  Lots of work but I am very proud of how it turned out.

Up next is the feature aprons from the traveling exhibit!

See here for part 2 and part 3.