Homemade Christmas Project #2 - Make your own apron

This year I participated in a handmade gift exchange among bloggers called Pink Christmas.

After a lot of deliberating, I decided to make Melissa an apron. She said she would love to have anything to help with her cooking efforts, but unfortunately, I'm a terrible cook and couldn't come up with anything that could help. Instead, I thought if I made her a cute apron, at least she would look cute while she was cooking and who is going to pay attention to her cooking when she looks so good? I told her that I'm thinking I need to make myself one now, because it might get me to try cooking some new things just so I can spend time wearing a fun apron. Maybe it will inspire both of us! Sorry, I couldn't seem to get a picture with out my little helper elf!

I didn't plan on doing a tutorial so I didn't take any pictures of the process or any measurements, but here are the basics.

If you know me, you know I decided not to get a pattern and to just make it up as I went along and hope it turned out. I think I got a 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 yards of fabric. I used really heavy decorators fabric with duck cloth for the pockets and pre-washed them because I knew the apron would need to be washed a lot, and I wanted it to last a long time. Because of the direction of the pattern, I ended up using the fabric from finished edge to edge so I had plenty of fabric to make two aprons if I wanted to.

I laid the fabric out and fold it in half width-wise and laid my favorite A-line skirt that twirls a little on top with one edge of the skirt along the folded edge of the fabric, then I just cut using the skirt as a pattern for the curved top and bottom of the apron. Then I pressed all of the edges in a 1/4 inch and then over 1/4 inch again and sewed a straight stitch all the way around to hem it. I added two yards of pretty ribbon to the top for the apron tie. I left a little fabric showing above, but you can do whatever you prefer. I lined the center of the ribbon up with the center of the apron and pinned it along to the edges, then stitched around the whole thing, triple stitching the outside edges to secure them well.

For the pockets, take two rectangles of fabric a bit bigger then you want your pockets to be. Mark the top center of each piece with a pin. Measure 1 1/2 inch from the pin on each side and fold it in to meet the pin in the middle and pin it there. Now you should have your box pleat at the top. At the bottom of the pocket, pull the fabric tight from side to side and then trim the edges to be straight vertically (you should be trimming off a little triangle about an inch or inch and a half at the bottom). I rounded the corners of my pockets by tracing around a bottle of big spool of tread on the back of the fabric and then clipping the edges and ironing the seam allowance under all the way around the sides and bottom of the pocket. You could skip this step and it would still be cute with square corners. I took another rectangle the width of the pocket and folded it in half with the edges turned under to line the top of the pocket and secure the pleat. Just pin it across the top edge and sew a straight line across it. Then I just pinned both pockets to the apron and top stitched around the sides and the bottom. And there you have it.

If you have questions just email me or leave a comment and I'll try to answer them. Good luck!