Mahjong anyone?

                   OK, I'll admit I'm somewhat addicted to mahjong solitaire.  Come to find out, it was invented by a royal beauty in seclusion to keep herself from utter boredom.  Myth has it, since this was right around the time of Confucius that he invented the game, not so!  At first, only the royal class was allowed to play mahjong, commoners would be punished with decapitation it they were caught playing.  It wasn't until 500 A.D. that commoners were then allowed to play.

The word mahjong means sparrow, hence, there are imagines of birds on the tiles.  The games was imported to the USA in 1920 and gained popularity VERY quickly.  It fell out of favor as a parlor game about 10 years later and the manufacturer was stuck with millions of unsold sets.  Over the years it has once again gained popularity, especially amongst the Jewish population so some believe it has Jewish roots but it does not.  It is one of the oldest games know that is still played in modern times.....invented by the Chinese around 500 A.D. 

Who would think one would run into mahjong fabric?  I first spied the red fabric with the Chinese calligraphy on it and teamed it up with the gold fabric.  It was then that I saw the mahjong fabric and fortune would have it, it went nicely with the other two fabrics.  It was my plan to make a reversible apron from the red and gold fabrics and then take the leftovers from that apron and use them in conjunction with the mahjong fabric to make a tri-colored apron.  Since the mahjong fabric is directional, the block size I would need to make the tri-colored apron would not be possible so doing some patchwork where the mahjong fabric would have been placed seemed to be the answer.  To make the bib part, I cut out two 7" squares and sewed them together side by side just like the pocket.  There was a bit of a slip up when cutting out the mahjong side of the apron.....the fabric gets folded in half and the apron pattern gets placed on the fold.  OOPS, I placed it the other way around and did not notice it before I started to cut.  Fortunately, I noticed before I went to far so there was now a slit in the middle of the apron.  Why not applique a red circle over it?  The red fabric was getting rather scarce, only a small circle could be gotten out of the scraps so I appliqued it onto a gold square and appliqued that over the slit.  I felt it  added visual interest ....it was like I had planned it!  This apron took me about twice as long to make as my usual tri-colored apron but I am pleased with the results plus the placement of the appliqued patch ended up directly over the heart.   All of this seemed like good fortune to me, go I named this apron good fortune.