After a week off, we met again to work on our aprons, and achieved gathering the apron, sewing it to the waistband. Instead of using the technique as directed in the pattern, my mom and my friend Sallie both recommended we try zigzagging over crochet thread (of which I have plenty!). It worked much better, and we didn’t risk thread breakage this way.
We also finished up adding the rickrack to the flying geese insert, so the bottoms of our aprons are complete. Next time we’ll be working on the bibs. It’s really starting to look like we have aprons!