Going into this experience, I knew next to nothing about sewing and felt anxious about imaging myself wearing a jumbled mess of threads and fabric for the rest of the semester, but coming out of it, I found myself with an unexpected fondness for the process and fortunately with a “brand-new” spanking apron that I hope to pass on to my future children.

Base Apron

Before any cutting and sewing could start, I first had to gather all the materials for the apron. This included the fabrics for the main body of the apron and for the neck and waist straps. I used this time to also gather any ancillary materials and tools that I would use to prepare before sewing like masking tape, a pair of scissors, rotary cutters, and a measuring tape. To best fit my body, I used custom measurements based on my height and waist size and measured and marked out cutting lines using masking tape. I included about an inch to each side of the apron fabric to accommodate for a double-folded seam at the edges. Once all the fabrics were measured to my liking, I cut them out using scissors and the rotary cutter.

Now starting the sewing part, I ran into my first issue: the sewing machine itself. It wasn’t set up properly, and having never set up the machine by myself, I spent about an hour finicking with the machine and rewatching sewing videos. I detailed every crevice of the machine until I finally was able to setup the machine and sew a proper stitch into a scratch piece of paper.

First, I sewed the edge seams of the apron. To do so, I folded about a ½ inch seam and kept it in place using many pins along the entire edge. I did my best to stich slowly down the edge of the apron: inching forward, stopping to remove the next pin, inching forward, and cycling through this process until the end of the fabric. Unfortunately, because of my unfamiliarity with large portions of sewing, the lines on the edges of the apron did not come out as straight or neat as I had hoped. Next, sewing the straps onto the apron. Taping and pinning down the edge of the straps where I wanted them to attach to the apron, I then began box-stitching them onto the apron. These were not my finest works and could use a lot of improvement (hell, all the stitching could have been a lot neater), but in the end, I am confident it would take at least some effort to yank the straps off the apron.

One issue I did run into with the straps was that I had left too much slack on my neck strap which would cause my apron to run low. To fix this issue, I rolled the middle of the strap and box-stitched it to secure it. Now, the apron hangs appropriately on my body.

With the final strap attached, the base apron was complete!

Pockets

With newfound confidence in sewing and a couple extra hours to spare, I wanted to further challenge myself by adding some uniqueness to my apron. Thinking the apron could have more color and functionality, I decided to add a pocket to hold my phone and pens and a large zipper pocket to house tools and materials.

Following mostly the instructions of a YouTube video, I picked out a new patterned fabric and measured the desired dimensions of the pocket (dimensions of my phone) and added slight margins to account for edge seams. I then sewed the fabric as shown in the below image, using a similar method to how I stitched the seams of the apron. To finish and attach the pocket, I stitched the border of three of the edges onto the top left corner of the apron.

The finished pocket is thankfully large enough for me to keep my entire phone as well as any pens or small tools I am using.

Zipper

The zipper pocket gave me a little more trouble. Again, mostly following the instructions of a YouTube video, I stuck two pieces of fabric together as shown below and sewed a small box to fit the zipper track.

Not fully thinking through the process, I had cut too small a piece of patterned fabric for the outer-facing portion of the zipper pocket, so I had to sew an additional larger portion of the patterned fabric to the small piece so that the pocket would look coherent. Thankfully after the small hiccup, the sewing process went smoothly, and I was able to successfully attach a large kangaroo-like zipper pouch onto my apron.

In an instance, another hiccup arose. To my dismay, when I pulled to open the pocket, the zipper came off the track, and I was unable to put it back on without ruining the entire track. Over a small snack break, the only idea to fix the zipper I could think of was inverting the pocket and sewing on an additional zipper track below the original. Successfully able to do so, I now have a double track zipper for my pouch.

Finished Product + Closing Remarks

Things I would like to improve upon for future sewing projects would include:

• Being more precise with my measuring to ensure proper material lengths and dimensions.
• Slowing down my sewing pace to make neater and straighter stitches.
• Practicing more of my box-stitching to make it neater and more secure.
• Spending more time envisioning and planning for the smaller details of the end product.

  

With this being my first major sewing project, I am overall proud of the final product and feel much more confident in my abilities to sew. I hope my kids like red.

Cost Estimate

Materials:

• 1 yard of red fabric: $5 (Walmart)
• 1/2 yard of patterned fabric: $3 (Walmart)
• 1 yard of strap fabric: $1.40 (Walmart)
• Zippers: $0.60 ($1.20 if account for broken zipper) (Michael’s)
• Thread: Negligible, less than $1

Time:

• 7 hours*$7.25/hr (price based on amount of sewing experience/minimum wage in Texas) = $50.75