It's Pinspired Friday! {A Little Apron}

TGFPF! (Thank God For Pinspired Fridays!)

Today, I am featuring yet another Christmas present, this time for my little niece. Last Christmas, I made pretty much everyone's Christmas present. Things ranged from scarves, necklaces, car carriers, barrette heads, quilts, can coozies, checkbook covers, business card holders... you name it, I probably did it. Needless to say, it left me a little burned out. I really had no intention on making a bunch of gifts this year.

But then I started making a list of people I had to buy for... and then I started seeing some interesting projects on Pinterest like last weeks whale... and the whole thing has snowballed again this year. Ha! This time, I am making it slightly easier on myself by not doing massive projects like the quilts, and I am buying a few gifts.

That being said, I purchased a 12 piece cupcake kit that comes with measuring spoons, cupcake tin, cupcake wrappers, cupcake stand, etc. for my niece. Her momma told me she always wants to help with baking and cooking and I thought this would be perfect.

The kit came with an apron, but it's plastic and lame. Every little girl who's interesting in baking and cooking needs a REAL apron!

So I scoured Pinterest looking for a good pattern and stumbled upon this:

From Petite Purls

It was perfect - I wanted a pattern or an idea that didn't use bias tape, something basic that I could dress up any way I wanted, and in a child's size.

If you're interested in the full tutorial, head on over to Petite Purls. I am just going to give a basic rundown of what I did, how I changed things and what I did differently.

I first cut my fabric. I'm using this ridiculously cute monkey fabric that I used for my bird mobile. For the main apron part, we need two pieces of 21"x19". fabric. Somehow, I screwed up and in my cutting, I cut pretty close to a 20"x20". D'oh. Luckily, I had a little trick up my sleeve that I'll show you later, so it was not the end of the world.

The original post I got the idea/pattern from says to now use the template to cut the sleeves. Well, there was no template linked (seems to be my luck eh?) So what I ended up doing was going 8" down and 6" across on paper, curving to create my own template. Traced it on the back of the fabric and cut it out.

This ridiculously cute fabric comes in green too. For the large pocket, we needed two 10"x19" pieces. Sew the two green pieces together right sides facing on the top seam only (this is your nice seam for the pocket). Turn the pieces inside out so the wrong sides are facing each other, press your seam and top stitch it. So fancy! Now, run a seam down the exact middle of the pocket. This seam is visible, so try to make it as straight as possible. Now you have a nice divided pocket.

So here's my little trick I was talking about. So I didn't end up with virtually a square apron, I added a small ruffle to the bottom. I cut a piece of fabric that was probably about 40" long and 3-4" wide. I folded this piece in half lengthwise (some would say hot dog style fold) so that the right sides were facing each other. Then, I sewed down the length and turned it inside out. Using just my regular walking foot on my machine, I then ruffled the fabric.

To ruffle the fabric, I just used my fingers to smoosh the fabric together as it went under the needle. Obviously, watch your fingers as you do this - your fingers shouldn't really be anywhere near the needle but closer to the feet. Once I was finished, I had about 6 inches more ruffle than I needed to fit the bottom of the apron, so I trimmed it to fit. (above picture)

In the original post, she makes three beautiful 20"x3" strips to make the neck tie, and the side ties. I was pretty much out of long enough fabric at this point, and because of the hard time I had cutting the apron earlier, I decided against making the ties but rather using coordinating ribbon. So I cut three 20" pieces of ribbon. Pin your neck tie 1/2" from each edge of the neck. Pin your side ties about 1/2" down from the corner. If you're doing a ruffle like me, pin your ruffle IN so that it's on the bottom when we inside-out the entire thing. A few tips here:

• Maybe I didn't catch it in the original tutorial, but I pinned everything down so that it was in the right place at this step. Since we're going to be sandwiching all of this in with the other apron piece which is eventually the back of the apron, it helps things not shift when you put the other apron piece on.
• You don't want to sew your neck ribbon or your side ties when you go to sandwich the apron together, so stick your side ties (loosely) in the pockets.
• Your ruffle will have the nice side facing the top of the apron at this point, and the yucky stitched side is going to be sewn under, so you won't have to worry about how bad those seams look.
• If you're going to use ribbon like me for the ties, and if one side is patterned like mine - pin the ribbon so it's pattern side is facing down (see above picture). This way, when you turn everything inside out, your pretty pattern is facing up.

So now, we sandwich the other piece of the apron (your back piece) to the piece with all of the pinned pockets, etc. Right side to right side (you'll be looking at the wrong side when you're sewing). To do this, lay the piece on top and align so the sides match up. The easiest way I found to do this was starting at the neck. Then, you'll be moving all of the pins on the piece below to the piece you just put on top. Start at the beginning and work your way around the apron to ensure all of the pins get moved to the top. You'll want to put them in the same general area on the apron they were before (i.e. the pin holding the ribbon, etc).

Now, before you sew, make sure you've left yourself about a 4" opening so you can inside-out the entire thing. I left my opening at the armpit. The original tutorial calls for the opening to be left at the bottom but with the ruffle, I didn't want to do that.

Sew around the apron (and move slowly through your ruffle - that's a lot of fabric your machine is plowing through right now and a broken needle is the last thing you want!). "Reverse" at the opening you leave so that it's a strong stitch when you go to turn it inside out. I just followed the edge of my walking foot - maybe a little less than a 1/2" seam allowance. If you're using a white fabric like me or something that you can see through a little, make sure you're watching so you don't accidentally sew up your ties.

Now get super excited and turn that bad boy inside out! Now, you'll have to top stitch around the entire apron, which will in turn close that armpit hole. Pin that hole and iron the apron so you get some nice crisp seams. Top stitch around the apron (I put my zipper foot on for this one so I could get close to a 1/4" seam allowance and followed the edge of the zipper foot). A tip: I started my top stitching in the left hand corner under the armpit. I figured if the threads got wonky when I first started, it'd at least end up under the armpit).

And you're done! How awesome is that? Give it a good ironing and then give it to someone you love!

 Thanks for following along! If you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear 'em! For more pictures and to see the original pattern, head over Petite Purls.