My 1st Apron

*One of the many rare long post. Consider yourself pre warned :P

I'm glad my sister proposed that I make this project for her friends' niece, for a fee, which made it more interesting! Kerching! Hehe

I have sewing books and magazines on instructions of how to make an apron. I have been wanting to make one but too lazy, no motivation or no material to make one. Its always something, as usual.

So this 10 year old birthday girl loves to cook, loves blue, pink and yellow and her aunt wants to surprise her with an apron. How nice.

My sister passed me an apron she bought as a sample. I just followed the 'pattern' and the rest was my creativity. Creative la sangat! I made a reversible mostly blue and pink apron which turn out really nice. I love it so much I wanted it for myself. :P I wanted to make adjustable neck too but the whole piece turned out a bit heavy due to the material used. So it was a fixed neck band.

The light weight 'pattern' I used. Since there is no front and back coz its reversible, I'll just call it side A and side B. I cut 2 piece of the body with 2 different material, 2 pockets of different material, a long 3" bias (2 times the length of the desired pleat length) for the pleat, 2 4" rectangle for the tie back ( to your desired length), 4" rectangle for the neck band (to your desired length), 1" bias for the rest of the sides where there is no pleats, 4 buttons and a good mood (very essential this). Prepare all of the above before piecing together (not being to helpful aren't I). Message me if those reading wants to know how I made this in detail coz I'm not sure anybody does read this anyway.

For the pleats, I fold and press the 3" bias in half and fold and pin each one. I didn't know this is exactly how it should be done until I saw one of Crafterhours post on a blouse they made. I only made this because I know I am going to screw and mess this if I sew on the machine without pinning.

After that, machine baste the opened sides so you will keep everything in place before the actual attachment to the body. You can hand baste I guess but I was too lazy.

I sew on the pockets first to the body on each side. You will see later that I changed the flowery pocket for side A to a plain pink. My sister thought it was too contrasting but I like it actually. My hubby says it looks like patch work which is nice. But customer is always right, so I decided to change it anyway just in case it was too much for the birthday girl to contain. :P Here I pinned the pleats and tie back inwards.

Then I hand baste them together. Place the right side of side B (with pocket already sewn on) on the right side of side A and sew the piece together up to the top of the tie back band.

Turn them inside out and it will look like the above. This was after I sent them to the printer to print ambroidered wordings "Junior Masterchef LILY" on both sides. Sew the binding of the remaining body areas and sew the neck band on. I sew the neck band last just so that I could do the adjustable buttons. After I decided not to do adjustable, I sew it on the binding aligning the stiches so that it looks more neat. Last, I sew the buttons on both sides just for decor.

My niece, Amira, trying out the apron. How cute is that?