![Tabubilgirl smiling and spreading the infinitely ruffled apron](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/IMG_0671.jpg)
This apron – Infinitely Ruffled 1780s Apron – began all the way back in 2018. It was my second project out of the American Duchess dressmaking book. I had made aprons, but at that point I hadn’t much experience with hand rolling hems, and this apron – well, this apron had a lot of rolled hems. There were 3 yards in the apron body, 6 yards up one side of the ruffle and 6 back down the other side. Just thinking about it, I needed a fainting couch and a handsome gentleman to sponge my temples. At my slow, painstaking rate of rolled hemmery, 15 yards of hem felt like miles.
I started with optimism – mostly at night, in front of the television, where I didn’t have to think of the miles and miles and MILES of hem (the estimate grew, exponentially, with every stitch) and I worked on it on and off, and on and off, and on, and on, and ON – I came to think of it as the Infinite Apron : when I was feeling down and like life had no meaning, I’d pull out this horrible apron and confirm that I was right.
![An apron laid out on the floor. The ruffle has been gathered and partially pinned to the edges of the apron.](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2019-07-13-19.46.15-scaled.jpg)
Then 2020 happened. Circumstances saw me stuck outside of Chile for 18 months, where I sewed – and hemmed – other things. Uncertain, unmoored, waiting for vaccines and badly missing Mr Tabubil, I sewed for my sanity’s sake: caps, fichus, mantelets, wrapping gowns, petticoats – I seamed, I gathered, I whipped, and I hemmed – Practice brought experience, and eventually expertise, and somewhere in the middle of it all – rolled hemming changed from proof of the dreary infinite to something that was fun.
When I finally made it home to Chile in 2021, I pulled out the horrible infinite apron and found that as a project, it had become benign. It had become something almost small. So I finished it. I took that heap of half-hemmed voile, I unpicked my laboriously bungled whip-gathers, and then I sat back, cracked an anticipatory grin –
I re-whipped my ruffles. I tacked them down. I stroke-gathered the waist to a band, and then I stopped, and looked for a bit, and I took some vast and serious pleasure in the formal, measured beauty of the strokes.
![Stroked Gathers on a 1780s Ruffled Apron](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/IMG_0619.jpg)
This infinitely ruffled apron had become metaphorical as hell. I felt existential whiplash with every step.
![A close-up view of a stroke-gathered apron waistband](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/IMG_0620.jpg)
Until there it was – the infinitely ruffled 1780s apron. I liked it so much, I made another one.
![An apron made of cross-barred muslin with gathered ruffles and stroke-gathering](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/IMG_1679.jpg)
Here’s an apron. Take two. I can HEM, you see. I hemmed around the world and back. Sometimes, looking at those lonely, drifting 18 months, I feel like I hemmed my way home.
![Again, Tabubilgirl smiles and holds out the original infinitely ruffled apron](https://www.sewwhathappens.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/IMG_0654.jpg)
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