Monday, January 16, 2012

Child's Apron Tutorial

I was in Kohl's last week and came across a Halloween dish towel and pot holder set clearanced for $2.79. I had been looking for a cute set to make a children's apron out of so I bought a couple of them. I saw the apron on Pinterest and had been keeping my eyes open for matching sets that I could try this with so I was very happy to find them so cheap! I did have to buy some orange thread, but used ribbon I had so I made this adorable apron for Chloe Jo for less than $4.00!
She thought it was pretty great, too! I made it a bit big so she can use it for a few years.
I'm looking forward to making something with her in the near future (who says you can't use an adorable Halloween apron all year long!?).

And because it turned out so cute and I know many of my readers sew (or aspire to sew), I decided to go ahead and blog the tutorial of how I did the apron.

I started off with the dish towel and hot pad set and a roll of ribbon.
The first thing I did was cut the part of the dish towel I wouldn't be using off. This will depend on the height of your child. I made the dish towel portion a little long so it wouldn't be too short in a year.
I then cut the ribbon. I cut a long piece to tie around the waist, 2 shorter pieces for the neck straps and a short piece to cover up the rough edges on the back of the apron. I made the short piece 12 inches long to fit a toddler. I also heat sealed the ends of each piece.
The next step is gathering the towel. I used the longest stitch length and sewed across the cut edge of the towel twice and then gathered it to be about 11 inches.
The gathered edge needs to be smaller than the shortest ribbon so that the ribbon will completely cover the rough edge. Also, make sure your gathering stitches are close to the rough edge so that the ribbon can cover them. You won't have to worry about taking the stitches out if you cover them up with the ribbon.
I pinned the ribbon to the back of the apron, making sure the ribbon covered the gather stitches.
I then changed my machine back to the normal stitch length and sewed one line across the to hold the gathers onto the ribbon.
Your apron should look like this right now.
Take the longest length of ribbon and pin it to the front of the apron, covering the gathers and stitching. Make sure the pins go through the towel and the short ribbon.
I then sewed the ribbon on, making sure to stay as close to the edges of the ribbon as I could. I just sewed it in a big rectangle the size of the short ribbon.
This is what my ribbon looked like at this point.
I then pinned the pumpkin hot pad to the ribbon and sewed it on with orange thread. I used 3 different colors of thread on this project.
Next, I pinned the remaining pieces of ribbon on the top of the hot pad and sewed them down for the neck straps.
And that was all there was to it! The apron with the green ribbon is Chloe Jo's and I made this one with the purple ribbon for my niece, Brianna.
Brianna's birthday is coming up and she asked me for an apron. Since the Halloween aprons turned out so cute, I went ahead and made her this adorable heart apron. It was basically the same process except instead of a hot pad, I used the part of the dish towel that was discarded for the Halloween aprons. I sewed it into a small square and sewed it underneath the waist ribbon instead of on top like the pumpkin hot pads.
I really enjoyed making these and will definitely be making another anytime apron for Chloe Jo!

1 comment:

Hannah L. said...

Very cute! Will be making one for my niece's birthday. Thanks for the tutorial. :)