globalapron Sweden

 
 Malin Lidén, is an apronista from Uppsala, Sweden. Her globalapron contribution is vivid with detail – the darkness of her great-grandmother’s existence, a mother’s love for her child, making do, and a woman’s ingenuity. 

My great-grandmother Ester lived up in the north of Sweden. It was very poor there and an especially hard life for women. The nearest food store was 36km (approximately 22 miles) away, and Judith, her daughter (and my grandmother) walked 12km (7 miles) to school.

My grandmother was a little girl in the 1930s, and when she needed an apron, Great-Grandmother Ester sewed one that would grow with Judith for some years. Fabrics were hard to get and, on top of that, expensive, so an apron such as this was a smashing idea, if you ask me! Decades later, my grandmother found her little apron and showed it to me. Redesigned and named the Ruuthie, this children’s apron is one that I now make and sell.

We live in a time that make us be extra careful with what we already have, so I re-cycle old fabrics and give them a new life in the form of my Ruuthie aprons. Here are Bianca and Maija washing up in their Ruuthies.

Maija baking gingerbread cookies and Leo and Texas in Ruuthie
             
rock ‘n roll.

Great-grandmother Ester past away in 1982, and Grandmother Judith is now 86 years old and lives in Arjeplog, a native lapic town with a population of 3600.

I live in Uppsala, Sweden’s 4th largest city, and very close to Stockholm. And I manufacture my Ruuthie Apron here in Uppsala. I just love aprons and I am very happy to be an apronista and share my love of the apron through my great-grandmother’s design.