Home Ec Aprons in Art

“Time Cards for Mothers,” and found aprons with added text by Elaine Luther. As installed for the solo show, “Ghost Prints and Shadow Work” at The Compassion Factory in Brookfield, IL in 2022.  Photo by Dulce Rodriguez.

Finding Vintage Aprons

I found the first apron, the blue one, at a thrift store near me. Years later, while at an artist residency in Minnesota, I was at a charming little thrift store, looking for a sweater, because, Minnesota, when I found the green one. It was so exactly like the other one! How weird! I thought.

I have since found more of these aprons, and been given them, and they are always in nearly pristine condition. I have learned, by asking around, in person and online, that these were made in Home Economics classes, in the 1960s and 70s. Most kids were about 11 years old.

Making these were a lot of work! Especially the ones with “chicken scratch” cross stitching. These aprons are always gingham fabric, and chicken scratch, according to the internet, is when you do cross stitch on top of gingham, using the squares of the fabric to guide you. I can understand why these are nearly all in pristine, seemingly unused condition.

Make Your Own Home Ec Apron

If you want to make your own, Chicago area quilter Erika Mulvenna has an excellent tutorial on her blog on how to make your own home ec apron. She calls it the One Yard, “Use-it-All” Apron. I have heard from women who took home ec and made an apron like this, that there wasn’t a pattern, that they made it just by measuring themselves and the fabric. Sometimes the aprons are gathered and sometimes they are pleated.  (The pleated ones are a bit easier to add text to, as you can see in the photo above.)

Erika’s tutorial shows two pockets, and I’ve seen these aprons with one pocket, two pockets, or no pockets.

The two aprons that were most recently given to me are a bit longer than the others I have! A taller girl made them!

Using Home Ec Aprons in Art

In 2022, I added words to the aprons and paired them with my “Time Cards for Mothers,” photo above.  More recently, I sewed one down to a whole top quilt made with my own custom fabric.

“What if aprons had pockets for paychecks and 401K matches? – Michelle Hiskey” whole cloth quilt with appliquéd apron, by Elaine Luther, 2025. Copyright Elaine Luther 2025. Custom fabric by Elaine Luther, printed by Spoonflower.  Look at all that chicken scratch stitching!

The source of that quote is a time card made by Michelle Hiskey for my Clocking in for Unpaid Labor Project. Here’s her card:

Altered time card by Michelle Hiskey, 2023.

I used her quote on this quilt with her permission.

Here’s a close up of that custom fabric with the checks on it, and here I’ve top quilted the quilt with lines radiating out from the center.

Whole cloth quilt, work in progress, showing custom fabric. By Elaine Luther, 2024.

This design was made with technical assistance from Becka Rahn, and I had it printed on Spoonflower. If you love it and have ideas for how to work with it in your own art, it’s available in my Spoonflower shop.. The time card fabric is also available, in two variations.

I had to create the checks fabric because I couldn’t find a single fabric out there to represent this idea of paper checks. Money fabrics, yes, and I’ve used those in other artworks, but nothing with checks.

Hand stitching the apron down took hours, but I do love the way it looks.

I’m not done using the aprons!  You’ll see more art made with home ec aprons from my collection in the future.