Product:
Apron, size small, with neck straps, two tying waist straps, and one large pocket in the center.
Procedure:
First, I measured and cut out the pattern – I purposely made the dimensions a bit larger than what was recommended in the textbook for size small in order to hem the edges in later. This was to prevent the edges from fraying.
Starting to make the pattern.
After this, I decided which fabric to use, shown below.
The fabric pattern I chose.
Then I laid the fabric out and traced on the lighter-colored “inside” part using the pattern. After this, I cut along the traced lines with a fabric cutter.
Once it was cut out, the hemming process began. I folded in the edges about an inch (the exact length of fabric that was tucked under wasn’t measured) and pinned them with the pins sticking in perpendicularly to the path I would sew. Then I set up the sewing machine with a dark green thread that would blend in with the apron fabric, and sewed the hem, passing over the pins as I went. After all the edges were hemmed, I pulled out the pins – despite what I was afraid of at first, the pins came out easily and weren’t caught in the thread.
The neck and waist straps came next. I cut two long pieces of strap fabric, one for the neck strap and one for the ties, then held the straps in their approximate location as I lifted the apron to where I wanted it to hang on my body. Next, I sewed the straps to the appropriate places using a box stitch for each. The box stitch was used over a regular, linear stitch because it is stronger and less likely to come unthreaded while wearing the apron.
Placement of the straps.
The final component I added was a pocket. I went with a fairly large single pocket that could hold things I would likely want to carry around with me while working in the OEDK, such as a wrench or screwdriver. The pocket could have been partitioned into two so that smaller parts like screws would be easier to find, but I decided against it because it would limit the size of things I could put into it.
To start the pocket, I took a piece of butcher paper that was about the size of the pocket I wanted and traced over the pocket’s fabric. Then I flared the pocket by adding half an inch to the top line on each side and drawing a line from the ends down to connect to the bottom line, forming a triangle. Then I expanded the dimensions of each side a bit to create extra fabric to tuck in. I cut the pocket out, then repeated the hemming process with all four sides and sewed the pocket to the middle of the apron (making sure not to sew the top edge to the apron!)
Pocket, hemmed and ready to sew onto the apron.
Challenges:
The most difficult part of this assignment was creating the box stitches. Turning the fabric proved challenging, and it was hard to determine whether the fabric was turned exactly 90 degrees. As a result, the sides of the “box” are not perpendicular to each other in any of the four stitches. Also, there were a few times where I tried to turn the fabric while the needle was up, which caused some issues with extra thread loops hanging out.
One of the box stitches.
Another challenge was hemming the edges where the tapered upper edge meets the straight lower edge. The fold that’s on my left when I wear it came out fairly smooth the first time, but the right side fold crinkled up after I sewed it. This was most likely due to not having enough pins on the edge, which caused the fabric to bunch up as it passed through the sewing machine and also didn’t hold the folded parts to each other sufficiently. I took out the stitches and retried, but it still doesn’t lie as flat as I would like.
Cost:
Labor: 7 hours at $15/hr = $105
Fabric for apron and pocket: 1 yard at $8.99/yd (at Jo-Ann) = $8.99
Fabric for straps: 1.5 yards at $3.74/yd (at Jo-Ann) = $5.61
Thread: negligible
Total: $119.60
