May Fabric Preview

We spent Cinco de Mayo thrift store hopping for fun new fabrics for the end of spring. Here are a couple previews of what you can expect to see in our shop.

This is a fun vintage floral cotton in bright orange, mint green and lavender, paired with a remnant of lavender polka dot cotton.

Another great vintage print, forest green with white, red and yellow tulips paired with up-cycled royal blue and navy cotton.

Spring Fling Fabric Preview

It's been a while since we showed off any of the awesome fabrics in our stash (which is waay to big at the moment), so while were were picking out things we want to use for spring time we took some pictures to share.

We just found these floral vintage linens at the Goodwill in Monroe the other day and fell in love with them. We happened to have the perfect green in stock, also up-cycled from linens.

We've been holding onto this adorable bunny print until it got closer to Easter time.

Of course we couldn't do spring without a bunch of beautiful floral prints, this one has a gorgeous deep red that matched a maroon linen we had left over from a custom order.

This is a piece of vintage fabric that was a gift from a friend. I love these vintage floral prints that are so delicate and the combination of yellow, black and blue is very unique.

Lastly this find was so awesome, also from our trip to the Goodwill in Monroe, we bought an entire queen sized vintage white sheet just for this floral edging. Fabric hunting is easily half the fun of running our shop, it's so hard not to keep it all for our own devices. Keep an eye out for these to show up in the shop!

Occasional Vintage: Hazel Hues

Normally I would have titled this post a "Weekly Vintage" but then I realized that it's really not fair to call it weekly if I don't do it every week... None the less, here is my latest find for our vintage shop. When I saw these I had to get them, it's a set of 70's ceramic corn dishes.

Set of 4 Ceramic Corn Dishes

Genius! How have I never heard of this idea before? Perfect little plates just the right size for corn on the cob, and I'm always down for some 70's brown and cream glaze. These would be a great decoration item for Thanksgiving, even if you don't use them for some delicious corn on the cob, slathered in butter... mmmm.. But I digress, these lovely dishes were also featured in a beautiful treasury which highlight pretty much the only fall color we were missing: brown.
Another treasury with a harvest theme feature our Stalk of Wheat Mug. After living on a hazelnut orchard for 10 years, I still have lots of fond (and some not so much, heh) memories of harvest time, so I really like this one.
I still haven't decided on a Halloween costume for this year, but I've been doing a lot of inspiration searching on Etsy and Pinterest. We'll have more Halloween aprons coming out this week in our shop, including a few more sexy designs, I'm excited to get them posted. I'm also excited to go eat some more of the delicious apple cake I made yesterday. Who needs real food?

Goodwill to Good Lookin': 1970's Floral Napkins

I'm going to be honest here and admit that, between the two of us, Cami is most certainly the master of the sewing machine while I am more proficient with the serger. So it is with pride that I present our latest Goodwill to Good Lookin' project during which I conquered my fear of sewing.

This apron started out with a set of twelve of these beyond awesomely retro napkins that we found at Goodwill. The colors are so fun, a classic 70's palette, but still so bright! It's hard to find vintage linens that aren't faded beyond recognition, but these were in perfect condition. And they were ideal for our Camilla aprons, which feature a three handkerchief design.

The most challenging part for me was getting the decorative stitch settings of the sewing machine to put on fabric what I had imagined, and seen Cami do without a second though so many times. After sewing many a line on my sample scraps I finally got it just right. I used a tight zig-zag to stitch the napkins together and form the pockets, and finished it off with a cute vine stitch at the waist band.

The finished product in our shop.

After quite a bit of frustration, and maybe some cursing, the apron came out looking adorable. I have a special place in my heart for this color scheme, (blame it on our old kitchen growing up: dark cabinets, orange counters, orange floor) something about the orange and yellow and chocolate brown just draw me in. You can view the listing for this apron in our shop here.

Weekly Vintage + Treasury in Yellow

Life gave us lemons this week, only in a good way! For our weekly vintage today I wanted to share my favorite new item in the Behind the Drapes shop, this totally cute set of bowls that look like lemons.

Vintage Yellow Lemon Bowls

They even have the little seeds rising up out of the bottom of the bowl, and the dimpled citrus look to the sides. I can just image eating rainbow sherbert out of these on a hot summer day. Bright yellows seemed to be on everyone's mind this week and our Pansy Ruffle Half Apron was featured in a treasury full of two of my favorite colors: purple and yellow!

We are currently working on our first ladies Custom Goth Apron, which I am very excited about, and are also still plugging away on the great organization overhaul. Expect more updates soon, and have a great weekend!

Weekly Vintage Loot + Mystery Awesomeness

Since we've opened up the Behind the Drapes vintage shop I'm going to start posting each week about the cool vintage treasures we've found for our shop.

1960s Domestic Buttonhole Worker

I think this is my favorite piece this week because it really has character. Growing up with my mom's singer treadle machine, a vintage electric Bernina and all the accessories for both I developed a true fascination with sewing machine parts they amazed me as a child and they still do now.

1970's Ceramic Goblets with Wood Stems

This set of 70's goblets really drew my eye because of their lovely glaze, they match but each is so unique. Cami and our mom both have a love of pottery, and the part that I enjoyed the most was the glazing. The process of glazing is like a fantastically planned surprise, the glaze may have an anticipated color but you can never know for sure how it will turn out until it comes out of the kiln.

Leo Constellation Shirt

Speaking of surprises, I just rediscovered my favorite tee-shirt shop: isotope. They have the coolest screen printed tee-shirts on the interwebs. I really like this shirt, especially because I'm a Leo, but it would be impossible for me to choose just one favorite. Which brings me to the best part about their shop: you can purchase a Mystery Tee-shirt Grab Bag in any size and they'll send you 3 or 5 random tees at a discounted price. I don't know about you, but to me paying less for a mystery surprise sounds like a steal.

Maybe I'll get a Leo shirt in my grab bag... I'll keep you posted. I'll also be posting soon about our latest brainchild, the Up-cycling Challenge Apron.

Pay No Attention to the Woman Behind the Drapes

The new sewing room isn't organized and pretty enough for me to share pictures with you yet but I do have some other exciting news. For a while now Cami and I have been waffling back and forth over whether we should start another Etsy shop to dip into the vintage market, and I am proud to announce that we decided to go for it!

To be honest I started off with a pretty safe bet by selling a dress that I had bought for myself quite a few years ago, when I was quite a bit slimmer. I had long since given up on it ever fitting again, and given that I never got a chance to wear it anyways it wasn't hard to let go.

Normally this would be where I link that pretty photo of the dress to the listing in the new shop, if the thing hadn't sold within an hour of posting. Seriously, less than an hour! Obviously I underestimated the goldmine of opportunities here. So yes, sadly that dress is already going to be sent off to a new home. We do however have a few listings for some pretty cool old fabrics.

Cute Set of Car Print Stretch Knits

We also have some neat sets of vintage seam bindings, hem tape, bias tape and the like. My favorite part about the notions is that there's a color called "Atom Red."

Set of 4 Boiltex Seam Bindings

The shop is a little bare at the moment, but I am still in the process of photographing a lot of fabric. Hopefully the listings there should trickle in as the days go by if I can stay on top of it. I will keep you guys posted on the giveaway, since it's our first, and the sellers first, it may be a bumpy ride!

True Vintage Inspiration

In my recent post about our forays into goth fashion and terry cloth experiments I mentioned that we had received a wonderful gift of vintage fabric. This came from a friend of Cami's who inherited the fabric from her grandmother and thought we would make good use of it. There were definitely some awesome pieces in there and we finally got around to taking some pictures to share with you all.

This stack is some awesome floral prints, my personal favorites are the tiny prints. They are so bright and colorful. Perfect for a pop of color for the waistband and straps of an apron.

Cami's selections were, of course, the green fabrics. The floral shown is simply gorgeous with a painted look about it, bright greens and yellows with screen printed crisp white accents.

This batch reminds me of a vintage kitchen, lemon yellows and bright primary colors. The yellow apple print is especially cute.

We aren't sure how "vintage" this last one is but we couldn't pass it up! It's an awesome collection of animals from these birds, to piranha looking fish, cows, and some we're not quite sure about.

Which fabric is your favorite? What style of apron would you like to see it on?

Goodwill to Good Lookin': Lions Club Blazer

One of our popular items lately are the men's up-cycled suit aprons, like the Fry Another Day apron which only lasted a few hours in our Etsy shop before selling. We recently got quite a steal on some suit jackets and shirts to make these aprons at St. Vincent de Paul, so we wanted to share the process of making them with you. One of our finds was this neat powder blue Lions Club International blazer.

This was such a cool vintage discovery, I loved the color, and the Lions Club patch added an extra retro charm to the jacket. We paired it up with a white dress shirt to complete the look.

 The first thing we do to make these aprons is deconstruct the jacket and trim the front down to an apron shape.

To make the lower half of the apron we use the bottom back of the jacket and extend the length of the jacket front. Here you can see this piece being hemmed before getting attached to the jacket front.

Once the shirt piece is fitted and tacked into the apron front, we finish it off by adding the waist strap. The final product is a dashing apron that will make any man look like a 5 Star chef!

License To Grill Mens Apron