For this project, I decided to do a reversible apron – if one side gets dirty I’ll have the other! Keep reading this post to find out the process behind this amazing apron!
1. INITIAL MEASUREMENTS:
Determining the dimensions of my own body was the first step, and with the help of a ruler, I measured different lengths and widths of how I wanted the apron to finally look. Then, I draw them into a piece of paper:
- The length from my shoulders down to right above my knees (70cm).
- The width of my hips plus some more centimeters as I wanted the apron to go a little bit behind my back.
- The width of the upper part of my chest.
- As I wanted the apron a little bit curved from my shoulders down to my hips, I created a 90° rectangle, using the centerline of the apron. From there, the midpoint of the hypotenuse was calculated and the curve was drawn, as shown in Figure 1a. It is not a perfect curve but I didn’t want to use a protractor as I didn’t want it that circled. Last step was to cut the paper with the shape of the apron, Figure 1b.
Figure 1a (left), Figure 1b (right): Initial measurements
2. CUTTING FABRIC:
With the shape of the apron in the piece of paper, I went over the cutting mat and cut two pieces of fabric 1×1 meters long. I had to cut two in order to make it reversible. Then, I placed my piece of paper over one of the fabrics and pinned it all around. I decided to start at one corner of the fabric so I could leave enough room for later making a pocket with the same fabric. Once pinned, the next step was to cut the fabric. I decided to leave 1.5 extra inches to make the later sewing part easier. To cut the second fabric, I directly placed the one already cut over the second fabric, and with the pizza cutter shaped my apron, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Cutting the fabric
3. SEWING TIME – PART I:
Before actually sewing both aprons together I had to set up the machine with the white thread. The first time took me 1 hour just trying to set up the sewing machine as for some reason the thread was constantly coming out of the needle. By the time that I had it all set I had to leave so I couldn’t sew anything. Good side of this part is that I got really good at setting up the machine.
I was really excited to sew my aprons together that rushed into the process by placing both fronts together and sewing the upper part. After I finished sewing the upper part, Figure 3, I realized that I had forgotten about the pockets, and the upper straps for holding the apron around the neck, so I had to unstitched what I had just done and ended up having the two individual pieces of fabric again.
Figure 3: Aprons without pockets and ready to be sewed at the top
4. POCKETS!:
As I wanted to have a pocket in each of the sides, two pieces of fabric with a shape of a boat were cut. First, I drew the shape in a napkin and pinned this napkin to the fabric, then, with the pizza cutter, I cut the fabric. I repeated this same process with the other fabric, nevertheless, while cutting this second one I accidentally went off a little bit and had to resize this second one. This is why this second pocket looks a bit smaller than the first one.
After cutting the fabric, I took both pockets and sewed the edges individually to themselves so no fringes were hanging around. Once the pockets were ready, I pinned them to my apron at the desired height, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Pocket pinned and ready to be sewed.
5. SEWING TIME – PART II:
As I already mentioned, the first step was to sew the pockets to the apron. First, I did blue pocket over red fabric and it was a pretty straightforward process as I didn’t encounter any problems. Then I sewed the red pocket over blue fabric. In this case I sewed and unstitched 3 times the pocket until I had it in the right position. An image of how bad it was sewed the first time is shown in Figure 5. At the fourth time I finally managed to place the pocket straight. The problem was that I was taking the pins way too early and while moving the apron inside the sewing machine the pocket got moved.
Figure 5: Failure sewing the red pocket over blue fabric
Once both aprons had their own pockets, Figure 6, it was time to sew them together. I placed them front to front and pinned them together, as shown in Figure 7. I actually used a lot of pins as I didn’t want them to move. Before starting sewing, I cut the straps for the neck and hips and placed them in between both aprons. Now it was time to sew!!!!!
Figure 6: Individual aprons with their own pockets
Figure 7: Sewing both aprons with pockets together
I started sewing on the right side. The first thing that I was sewing was the strap to the apron. For the visible ending of the strap, I folded it and sewed it double for a nicer look Figure 8a, while on the inside I did a couple reverse stitches to secure it. Note: The reason why I didn’t do a box stitch was because I was completely sure that it would look bad when reversing it. Now that it is closed I regret not having done it as it is when I see that the stitch would have remained inside and hadn’t affected my apron. Anyway, here is an example of how a box stitch would look like, Figure 8b.
Figure 8a (left): Outer part of the straps; 8b (right): Box stitch example
After doing a couple forward and reverse stitches over the strap I continued sewing the apron along the line that was created with the pins until I was 10cm close to the starting point. Where I had the straps I also went a couple of times over them with reverse stitching. I needed those 10cm to introduce my hand and be able to reverse it, Figure 9.
Figure 9: Opening for reversible apron
Finally, once reversed, I finished sewing the left side of the apron et voila!! A reversible apron ready to be used!
Figure 10a (left) and 10b (right): Finalized apron
Once I tried it on I had to readjust the strap of the neck as the apron was a bit longer than what I had calculated, Figure 10a. Therefore it ended up looking like Figure 10b! 🙂
6. ESTIMATED COST:
If I was buying and paying myself all the necessary materials (including the sewing machine) to do this project, the estimated cost would be ≈ $325. This amount comes from:
- Sewing machine ≈ $160
- One role of thread ≈ $2
- 2 yards of different fabrics ≈ $15
- 1 strap roll (of 45m) for tying around the apron ≈ $28
- Hours of work ≈ 6h x $20/h = $120
If the only thing that I had to do was buy the materials, it would lessen the cost quite a lot down to around $40.
