This week, I sewed my very first apron! The whole experience was amazing, especially since I had never used a sewing machine before. My only prior experience with thread and needles was doing hand embroidery on a small round hoop. So, I only had a vague sense of the procedures when I started, and I am surprised that that I was able to design something entirely my own!

First, I measured the dimensions for my apron, as the sizing chart was a bit too large for me, and outlined it on the pattern paper. I used two pieces of pattern paper with the same markings and cut one first so I could physically size it against my body to make sure it fit. Initially, I taped the uncut pattern paper directly to the fabric while cutting, but I then realized that the fabric wouldn’t always lie flat against the paper, causing the edges to turn out uneven. To solve this, I used a marker to outline the fabric directly, then cut along those lines.

After cutting the fabric, I folded the edges to make them neater and pinned them in place before sewing. Once that was done, I attached the straps to the apron using a box stitch. Since I hadn’t learned this stitch in class, I looked it up and practiced on some scrap fabric. At first, the back of my box stitches turned out very messy, forcing me to undo them, which took up a lot of time. After asking for advice, I learned that I needed to keep the needle in the fabric while turning it to avoid uneven stitches, and it worked much better!

Once the sewing was complete, I felt that something was missing—it looked like any apron, with nothing unique to make it stand out as mine. So, I started brainstorming ideas for decoration. My first thought was to make a bow from some red-and-white fabric, but it looked too abrupt compared to the rest of the abrupt. This made me started to come up with many different ideas to make up for this, including cutting various fabrics to create a patchwork-style apron. In the end, I found an idea that I was very satisfied with: making a rabbit wearing a bow! I used the leftover black fabric to cut out the shape of a rabbit, with the red-and-white fabric as the background, and added the bow on top. Then, I folded the edges and sewed it onto the apron. This part was a bit tricky because I had to sew rounded curves, so I went very slowly on the machine, sometimes even using my hands to guide it.

And this is my finished product!

Overall, this apron costs:
~7 hours at $10/hour: $70
1 yard of black fabric: $8
Fabric for decoration(Picnic Gingham Yarn-Dyed Red/White): $5.50
Fabric for straps: ~ $2
threads: ~ $0.50
Total: $86

The table after cleaning it: