I’m not sure this guy knows what he is talking about. These four ready-made aprons were embroidered for another doting grandmother who spends significant blocks of time with her two granddaughters and she seems to be aging not at all!
This ageless Granny and her daughter will be making Christmas cookies with the girls. I’m sure there will be some great photo opportunities for the multi-generational baking crew.  And I doubt either Granny or Mommy will look any older when the kitchen is finally cleaned up.
When I embroidered aprons for my grandchildren, I had a hard time finding any appropriate designs. There is a plethora of chef collections, including those by Loralie, Amazing Designs, Adorable Ideas and Hatched in Africa. But none of these are for children.
Then I found Roberta’s Creations Cookie Cutters. www.robertasreations.com
While there are probably other suitable design collections, when I found this one, I looked no further. Each of the bear chefs comes in 4×4 and 5×7 frames, though the 5 x 7 frame designs do not fill up the hoop. And each comes as a “boy” version with a chef’s hat and a “girl” version, with a hair bow. The chef’s hat bears look pretty androgenous to me, so I mixed them up on the aprons, even though they all were made for female cooks.
I did have some trouble stitching the  “I love (heart) Cookies” on the sign board. The text seemed to just sink into the rather lofty thread background. After stitching it a second time, it was impossible to rip out so it will stand as is. But the message is clear.
The text that is part of the collection makes a nice addition to the aprons. Of course, I had to unstitch the pocket dividers to embroider “Stirring up Sunshine,” and others. Then I topped the stitching with stacked white and red buttons.
The candy cane font is a real treasure. My ever resourceful and knowledgeable friend Judy Day put me on to this free true type font. If you do a Google or Yahoo search for true type fonts, you will find it and can download it into most software programs. I know for certain that it can be done in PE-Design and Palette. I have no hands on experience with any others.
But you must install the program. That was a roadblock for me until Judy explained it. I thought once it appeared in my font folder it would work. It does not.
The beauty of this particular font is that it is sizable to whatever degree your lettering program allows. So it will fit anywhere.
Previously, I had purchased 3 seperate candy cane fonts, but all are relatively large. With this true type font, I can create text in almost any size.
It is important to note that this is a one color font. The red in the candy cane text is just the red of the apron fabric. If I were stitching it on white, my thread color would be red. The background fabric becomes the second color.
I was especially pleased with thread selection for these designs. Usually, I labor about as long over fiber type, thread weight and color as it takes me to stitch out the design. Of ten, after all is said and done, I wish I had chosen otherwise. But this time, I have no regrets.
The bears are stitched with Coats and Clarks Twist Rayon, 35 wt. 200 yds. per spool. Regular variegated thread has too much distance between the color changes to give a variegated effect. In fact, it would render stripes on this bear. The Twist Rayon is two strands of thread twisted together, so it suggests texture where there is none. It is just wonderful for fur. The thread comes in a variety of colors but I haven’t seen it in sewing stores for the past year or two. Fortunately, I had stocked up on the brown, which I think is perfect for bears. Whether it is discontinued by the store or by JPCoats I don’t know.
The other thread which continues to delight me is the Robison Anton 50 wt. cotton quilting thread. For satin stitch lettering, this gives excellent coverage and raises the letters as it if they were padded by hand.
I guess it’s time to get the grandchildren’s aprons out for our gingerbread house decorating this week.  It will surely take longer than an hour. I hope I don’t start aging when the first 60 minutes are up. It’s happening fast enough even when the grandchildren are not around.
