My dear friend and fellow Waldorf Homeschooling mother, Natalie, has been busy making and dreaming about making several  “story aprons” of different types.  She has so inspired me, and I wanted to share that with you all.

One type of apron reminds me of “The Pocket Lady” from our local Waldorf School’s Holiday Faire.  Essentially, the Pocket Lady at the Faire has a long coat made with many pockets filled with little crafted treats that the children can pick.  My friend is making a simpler version of this – taking an apron with pockets, embellishing the pockets with a beautiful design and filling each pocket with a needle-felted creation or nature item that represents a verse or song for her Kindergarten-aged child.  The child gets to pick the pocket and hear the verse or song that goes with the object.  What a cute idea!  A type of apron that may work for something like this would be this one at Dharma Trading Company:  http://www.dharmatrading.com/html/eng/7559578-AA.shtml  or to make your own!

The second kind of apron that we are both dreaming of making is one my friend saw over at Suzanne Down’s beautiful puppetry blog in the following post:  http://junipertreepuppets.com/story-apron-wool-magic-article/ .  You can see a photo of The Story Apron in action here:  http://junipertreepuppets.com/the-power-of-language/   and more pictures here:  http://junipertreepuppets.com/puppet-story-apron-class/

Essentially, my thought was to wet felt a circular, pizza -dish sized wool for the top, to embellish that with dry needle felting and then to sew it onto a silk I have dyed.    My plan is to make an apron  for Fall, Winter and Spring (ie, our school year) and use those seasonal backdrops for a variety of needle-felted puppets.

Has anyone done this and have experience to share?
This is such a lovely idea, thank you so much to my dear friend and to Suzanne Down for the inspiration!

Many blessings,

Carrie