Apron

Remember the edging I posted last week? It was part of the apron I made my mother for her birthday.

I made the apron with the blue polka dot fabric on the outside and a plain white fabric on the inside, but after making a couple of these I’ve realized they would be completely reversible if you just used a pretty fabric on the back instead of plain white.

Here’s how I made the apron:

Supplies

• 1 yard main fabric
• 1 yard liner/reverse fabric
• 1/4 yard straps fabric
• 2 yds. trim, if desired

I started with an apron I had already made for myself (posted here) as a template. You can either use an apron you already have and love (be sure to add about 1/2″ seam allowance on all sides), or use the diagram below to mimic mine (seam allowances already included). If you’re making your own template or using mine, you could draw it out on posterboard/kraft paper/whatever you have around that’s close to a yard long and 18″ wide.

Start by folding your template/old apron and both main and liner/reverse fabrics in half from top to bottom (this is how your fabric would have come on the bolt, but I strongly recommend prewashing your fabrics – especially if front and back are very different colors like my bold blue/white combo). Then cut out both layers of folded fabric around your template/old apron!

Now its time to make the neck and waist straps. Cut two strips of fabric 3.5″ wide by the width of your strap fabric (44″ or so). Cut another strip from the same fabric that is 3.5″ by however long you want your neck strap. I chose ” after I thought the neck strap was too long on my last apron. Decide how long you want your neck strap to be by pinning two ends of a strip to the top piece of one of your cut out apron pieces and make sure it fits over your head comfortably. Once you’ve decided how long you want your neck strap to be, add a couple inches to the length of the strap to account for attaching it to the apron on both sides.

Sew all three strips lengthwise with about 1/2″ seam allowance. Don’t sew either end closed on the neck strap, but sew one end each of the waist straps closed. I chose to sew them closed at a 45 degree angle because I think they’re prettier angled that way 🙂 Then trim the edges if you angled your corners, and turn them all inside out.

Now sandwich all your pieces together. First, lay the main fabric face up. Then put the liner/reverse fabric face down on top of it and line up the edges (the fabrics should be right side together). Put the straps between these two fabrics, with the ends that will be sewn into the apron sticking out, and pin them in place. This way, when you sew the apron together, the straps will be attached the right way. For the neck strap, make a single twist between ends so it will lie flat on your neck. If you’re adding a sewn in trim (like the eyelet ruffle on my last apron), pin this carefully along the bottom hem so that the non-decorative edge is aligned with the edges of the fabrics and the pretty part of the trim is inside your apron-sandwich. Since I was going to crochet a trim on the outside, I skipped this step for this apron (and thus don’t have a picture for it – sorry!). Then pin around the rest of the edges to keep the apron-sandwich well aligned.

Once you have all the layers pinned together (you probably don’t need as many pins as I have in the picture above – but it makes me feel better to know that things won’t shift or move), trim the parts of the straps sticking out past the edges of the fabric and sew around the edges. MAKE SURE that you leave a 3-5″ opening! You need to leave this opening so you can turn the apron right side out. When I added a sewn in trim on my last apron, I left this opening above one of the side straps since I did not want to deal with hand sewing over two layers of fabric and fancy trim. This time, I left the opening below one of the side straps since I was going to crochet over it anyways.

Then turn your apron inside out through the opening! I like to start by pulling the opposite waist strap through and then going from there – but however you want should be fine. This always feels like I’ve messed up – but just keep pushing bits of inside out fabric towards the hole and pulling them out the other side. And then its beautiful when you suddenly have a right-side out apron (!), except that its all wrinkly. Nothing an iron can’t fix! Making one-sided things, I like to iron as below, with a slight overhang of the main fabric onto the back side. This isn’t really a big deal, but I like that my very contrasting liner fabric never shows up on the front.

I then added on a crochet trim using this tutorial with size 3 yarn and a 5.5 mm hook, although I’d use a smaller hook if I were to do it again. Beware – 60″ is a long way to hand crochet a trim (about 2 pillowcases worth!), which is something I didn’t realize until I was too far to turn back.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with how well it turned out and it only took about 45 minutes to make (minus the crochet trim, which was a labor of love).

I’m sharing this at some of these places.

<3,
Julia