the history of aprons

I make them, I wear them, I love them. Aprons. Most days I rush home from work & head straight to the kitchen. Aprons have saved my clothes from countless flour spills, soup splashes, oil pops & tiny wet hands. This morning my mother-in-law emailed this to me & I had to share it with my fellow craft-a-billies.

Here's a pattern I purchased a couple months ago when she & I were at JoAnn's. It was originally $8.95 (on sale for 99cents)

And here's a pic she sent of a very similar vintage pattern from McCalls:

*Notice it's only 25cents and a size medium is 14-16! Ah, the good ole' days.

And this is the history of Aprons:

The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath because she only had a few. It was also because it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and aprons used less material. But along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.

It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears. From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.
When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids..
And when the weather was cold grandma wrapped it around her arms.
Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove. Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.
In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees. When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.
When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men folks knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.
It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes. Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw. They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron. I don't think I ever caught anything from an apron - but love...