Apron Day at Sisters Library

Women have been wearing aprons for over 200 years, and then some. That's what Bobbe Schafer, of Nellie Jane Designs in Powell Butte, shared with a group of apron-wearing women in the Sisters Library community room last Saturday.

According to Schafer, the whole apron thing got started with men. They wore protective clothing over their work clothes when they were butchering animals for markets; accordingly, their garb was called a butchering apron.

Over the years women adopted the apron to protect their garments, and in the early 1800s they became a way of dressing every day - most women put them on when they rolled out of bed in the morning and didn't take them off until they fell exhausted into bed at night. At the turn of the 20th century most pioneer woman were always ready with their apron on and their rifle, "just in case."

In those times, aprons were worn almost to the floor, as women's skirts were the same length. In the 1920s, sun-bonnet aprons were popular, with patterns that cost 15 cents, and the hem of skirts began to rise, as did the price for apron patterns.

Aprons weren't always worn to protect clothing; women wore them for social events, and they were also used to dry children's tears.

There were "grammy aprons," many of which had matching caps. There were also pinafore aprons children wore to school, known lovingly as a "pinny," and in Grant Wood's famous painting, "American Gothic," Granny is wearing an apron adorned with ric rac.

In the '40s you could buy a "figure flatterer" pattern from Simplicity for 15 cents. During WWII, women working in the USO wore what became to be known as "victory aprons," and McCall's had apron catalogs that arrived by U.S. Mail.

Women's tradition has it that if the strap of the apron fell off a woman's shoulder, her beau was thinking of her, and if she burned a hole in her apron she was going to get married.

Some of the most beautiful aprons were made from the fabric of chicken-feed sacks, flour sacks and the like. It wasn't unheard of for a woman to send her husband back to the feed store and trade in the chicken feed he brought home because his wife didn't like the pattern on the sack.

However, aprons suddenly vanished in the '70s when frozen food, automatic washing machines and the women's movement began to change society. Some women even thought that wearing an apron was a sign of servitude.

But now we're in a time of "his-and-her" aprons, and men can buy expensive aprons for barbecuing. For more information visit www.bobbeschafer.com.