Apron Fun!

As bigger projects are currently brewing in the creative kitchen, little, fun things come through pipeline that are def worth exploring!
One of these projects I just finished this Friday: a creative apron-cap set designed for my friend Thomas' Hot Dog Stand.

First off, let me say this is no ordinary Hot Dog Stand. Thomas conceived the idea when he was at Burning Man and as he watched the sun rise he thought. "Wouldn't it be great to have a hot dot right now?" Thus was born "Sunrise Hot Dogs".
He has since configured and built the best traveling hot dog stand around, but was missing one key ingredient....a proper uniform. So I came to the rescue with my bags of scraps and wild ideas.

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Creating the basic design had to be simple and practical--I mean it is an apron after all! Therefore I knew that it was the embellishing that held all the promise of creativity.

Since the title of his company is Sunrise Hot Dogs, we decided it would have a wild-looking sun rising out from beneath the pockets of the apron. Creating the sun was easy and fun since I have tons of scraps and even itsy bitsy scraps that work perfectly for applique technique as seen in the picture above.

Once I found the right combination of fabrics I laid them on the base of red fabric and played with the arrangement of the colors until I found a design I liked. Then, I pinned them to the red and used gold thread to quilt over the patches in a flame-like fashion. The result added a very fiery and alive look to the cloth strips. I love the abstract threading on it, for me it adds the little extra je ne sais pas, that makes the piece complete. I often find myself doing little details like this in all of my work because it adds a painterly quality that allows random expressiveness to shine.

I also took a photo of the backside of the apron before I lined it, because sometimes it is very neat to see just the raw thread marks without the distractions. As you see here, it is def. interesting. Note the light wrinkled effect above the sun portion. Even though it is hard to see where the flames were sewn (due to using a red thread as a base thread), it is the result of all the crazy flame stitching and could be the inspiration for other fabric manipulation techniques.

Not much more to say except I think he will be the hottest hot dog vendor I've ever seen, and it sure to bring happiness to those hungry party goers!