Author’s Note

I did the dang thing in a single sitting accompanied by Mina and Amelia, and only broke down once.  I fumbled through this project, truly, but I’m proud of what I made, and for not lying and saying I could handle an intermediate version of the apron.

In the beginning…

There was fabric. I chose a red and white plaid fabric for my apron because it would go with most of the things I wear in my day-to-day life.  The fabric came pre-cut in yard-long pieces.  To measure myself, I hunted around the OEDK before finding a roll of measuring tape, with which to measure myself.  I knew I wanted my apron to completely cover the front half of my body below the neck and above the crew cut socks, so I took my measurements at the hip rather than the waist.  

THIS WAS FOLLoWED IMMEDIATELY BY…

Measuring the bejesus out of some butcher paper.  I took a 22″ measurement of width for my apron, with a 32″ length, with 1″ allowances for 1/2″ double folded seams around the entire garment.  I measured the bottom of the apron’s arm angles to start at 8″ on my body by draping the fabric over where I wanted it to hang, and pinching the sides below where my arms stopped, and angled the corners of these arms to cut 2″ into the apron giving me the asked-for 3″ reduction in apron top length.  I also drew little arrows to remind myself which direction the measurements were taken in!  Practical, right?

And then she goofed (for the first time).

When measuring the butcher paper for the remaining 4ish” of the width of the apron, I drew the measurements on before attaching the pieces of paper together.  This was widely regarded as a dumb move, because when I taped the pieces of paper together, quelle surprise!  They totally did NOT match up.  Woe!

So I had to draw them again.  Sigh.

And time moved on…

And I entered the snippy phase of making fabricstuffs.  I laid the template out on the fabric, and traced it in chalk before cutting the design out.  Much of this project was spent scampering around the OEDK looking for various identical versions of things, like scissors, rulers, and needles (more on those later).  Upon my seventh pair of scissors after one failed rotary cut, I found a pair that was finally sharp enough and got to snipping.  And things were snipped.  Huzzah!

Post-Snip, the pin

You guessed it.  The pinning.  Which I didn’t find that horrible, entirely because I didn’t stab myself.

Prof. Bisesti walked by about 3/4 of the way through and showed me a cool alternative way to pin my apron so that the pins would be able to take out during sewing (third picture).  At this point things were moving about as eloquently as a baby giraffe.  As a beginner, I gave myself credit for good work!

But…

The doldrums

Sing to me, o muse, of the woman who harrowed at the sewing machine for only slightly longer than her peers but still felt really strongly about it.  If you’ll notice, the events within this apron follow a pretty dramatic waveform pattern of wild highs and crushing lows.  Here’s another crushing low for you, streaming live on your phone and on the web.

I broke five (count ’em) five, needles trying to sew this apron; three because I kept forgetting to put the foot of the sewing machine down, and two for unknown reasons.  I did learn how to replace needles though, and where they are in the OEDK.  So net win methinks.

 

 

better, more Ancillary things

So I sewed and sewed and didn’t have a mental breakdown (yay) even when I realized that I had missed one of the folds of the tapered side of the apron (double yay) because I just cut off the vestigial fold (wow where does she get it from).  I then did four cheeky box stitches, which were surprisingly labor intensive.  Since I don’t know sewing machines very well, I alternated between hand cranking the stitches in and using the foot pedal.  Some stitches were boxier than others due to poor trigger control.

Parts and labor

Fabric: $9.99/yd per Joann

Neck Strap: $1.67 for 2ft ($4.99/2yd per Amazon)

Waist Strap: $0.36 for 7ft ($8.49/55yd per Amazon)

Needles (Singer 90/14 Universal Sewing Needles): $3.47/pack of 5 per Amazon

Labor: $55.64 ($13.91/hour per Payscale as a Sewing Machine Operator with <1 year experience)

Machine cost: $0.52 ($0.13/hour electricity cost per Sewingiscool)

Total: $71.65 for one (1) apron (and five needles)

And there you have it!

One me-sized-ish apron-ish.  If I were to do this again, I would move the straps so they were a little further from my neck and lifted the corners of the apron too.  I would also taper the top more and put the sewing foot down more.  I’m proud of my work, and know where a lot more things in the OEDK are.