Going into this apron project, I was feeling good about my skills and what I would be able to accomplish. You see, this isn’t my first sewing rodeo: I’ve known how to sew for years and have a number of different sewing projects under my belt. I’ll admit that my past projects are a bit of a weird mix of whatever caught my interest at the time, but experience is experience, regardless of whether it came from sewing an item of clothing or a long furby.

Given my past experience, I felt pretty confident and wanted to make an apron that would be challenging and that I could see myself using long-term. After doing more research than I thought was possible about aprons and spending a not insignificant amount of time on Pinterest, I settled on a crossback apron. Besides the fact that making it would be a fun challenge, this seemed like the perfect apron for me: crossback aprons are supposed to put less strain on your neck, which is something I know my poor neck muscles will very much appreciate (when I say they’ll appreciate it I actually mean they desperately need it, since I’m pretty sure the neck heating pad that I’m wearing while typing this is the only reason they’re still holding on). My biggest single source of inspiration was the Hedley & Bennett Crossback Apron: the design had the main things that I was looking for, but wasn’t overly complicated and still felt doable.

At first, I didn’t have fabric, so I chose to get started by working on a pattern. While I could’ve made basically the exact same thing using a basic drawing, I impulsively learned how to use some free patternmaking software to make a basic apron pattern.

After making this plan for my pattern, I started working on transferring it to paper. I chose to change the seam allowances slightly from the 1″ allowance in the image above so I would have a wider hem on the top and bottom of the apron. Since the apron is symmetrical, I decided to only make one half of the pattern and then simply flip it over to create both sides of the apron.

After I got my fabric, the next step was to cut the fabric out in the shape of my paper pattern. The fabric was initially pretty wrinkled, so I was going to have to iron it. This is where I ran into my first problem: the iron wasn’t working. I tried to use it like I would use any other iron, but had no success. After trying quite a few different things to get it to work and still having no luck, I turned to Google to find an instruction manual. Unfortunately, this wasn’t very helpful because the manual said to “turn the iron on” like it was something that was so simple it required no explanation, but that was the exact part I was stuck on. Since I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be so decisively outsmarted by an iron, I began to suspect the problem wasn’t user error, so I turned to troubleshooting. After looking at too many pictures of the same model of iron online, I noticed that the control dial wasn’t quite right: there was a bit of a gap between the dial and the body that didn’t show up in any pictures.

I figured this was the problem, so I ended up doing minor iron surgery to get it into the right position. The plastic dial simply needed to be lined up with an inner metal rod.

After this small fix, the iron finally showed signs of life! Now I could finally begin working with my fabric.

To cut the fabric to the right shape, I laid my pattern on top of it and used a rotary cutter to trace the paper.

Next, I made a smaller pattern for the pieces that would hold the straps in place in the back. I traced this from the part of the apron it would attach to to ensure that the pieces would line up. Then, I cut out these small pieces from the fabric.

Before starting sewing, I decided to iron the hems so they would be nice and ~crisp~. Even though this took a little longer, I think it was worth it due to the appearance of the hems and also due to the fact that I didn’t have to put as many pins into the fabric to get it to stay in place while sewing. Finally, I could start sewing! I had no idea at the time, but this step that I was very excited to reach would actually slowly drive me insane. I started sewing on the Brother VX-1435, as it was the only sewing machine available at the time. I thought it would be pretty simple to use since it is almost exactly the same as the sewing machine I’ve used at home, but unfortunately that was not the case. I tried for far too long to get anything resembling a neat stitch by adjusting the tension and stitch length, but had no luck. It seemed that the sewing machine was having trouble pulling material under the foot consistently because of the very smooth texture of the nylon fabric. Using this machine, I made absolutely zero progress I didn’t have to seam rip out, so I eventually decided to just wait until the other machines were available to see if I would have better luck with those.

Next, I tried using the Singer Tradition. This machine did quite a bit better than the Brother, but still wasn’t perfect. For the three layers of fabric in my double-folded hems, it could move the fabric under the foot without me having to intervene, but when there were more than three layers it ended up having the same issue as the Brother machine did :​( However, since it worked most of the time, I initially decided to keep using it even though it required a lot of help to get the fabric through at the beginning and end of hems (where they would overlap with the next hem). While using this machine, I sewed all of the hems on the body of the apron and also attached the small pieces that would hold the straps in place in the back of the apron.

The difficulty I had sewing on the corner pieces for the straps was part of what led to me giving up on using the Singer Tradition. With both the apron and the corner pieces having double-folded hems, there were simply too many layers for the machine to handle and I was basically having to push the fabric through on my own the whole time :/ I managed to get them finished, but it took me far longer than it should have since I had to redo many of the stitches multiple times, and I still wasn’t really happy with how they looked.

However, the last straw for the Tradition was the box stitches. I tried multiple times to get something that would work using that machine, but the combination of the thickness of the strap and the slick apron fabric was simply too much. I eventually gave up and changed to the Singer Heavy Duty, and had a much easier time with this machine. It took a little bit of adjusting to, but it was able to handle the smooth fabric and multiple layers with fewer problems than the other two machines, and I was able to finish the box stitches on the straps.

Finally, it was time for me to add a pocket. I decided to use some navy blue cotton scraps from the bin of extra fabric. This was partially an aesthetic choice, but I also just really wanted to avoid having to work with the other fabric more than I had to given how much trouble I had already had with it. I ended up basing the dimensions of the pocket on this apron. I chose because it seemed like the size would work well with the dimensions of my apron and also because I really like the cute little pencil pocket :​)

One change I made to the version on that apron is the addition of double hems so the pockets would be consistent with the rest of the apron. Once again, I ironed everything before sewing to get those ~crisp~ edges.

Now I could sew on the pocket; I had reached the home stretch! My pre-ironed hems made attaching the pencil pocket to the larger pocket and attaching the larger pocket to the apron along the pocket’s edges pretty easy, and after that, I just had to sew a few lines to divide the pocket into smaller compartments. For this, I used some masking tape to mark a straight line to follow while sewing.

After battling with just about every piece of sewing equipment in the OEDK, I was done! Here are some pictures of the final apron:

Reflecting on this project, I’m overall pretty happy with how things went. Although some of the stitches aren’t as nice as I would’ve liked them to be, the unfamiliar and just generally difficult texture of the fabric made things really tricky so I feel like I did the best I could with my experience mostly sewing cotton and the time that I had. Probably the most obvious thing I wish I had done differently relates to my sewing machine switching: I feel like things would have been much easier and my final product would have turned out better if I had simply started with the most capable sewing machine. I’m really happy with how much I learned working on this apron due to having to work with an unfamiliar fabric and deal with a number of technical difficulties (I definitely know much more about iron and sewing machine anatomy than I did before thanks to the random problems I had to fix).

My estimate for the cost of this apron is very high simply due to how much time I spent on it. If I was to make it again, it would probably only take me ~5 hours now that I am more familiar with the Singer Heavy Duty sewing machine (and know to only use that one), and it would be much cheaper as a result. Here is a breakdown of the cost:

• fabric for apron body, nylon, ~1 yard: $8
• fabric for pocket, cotton canvas, ~1 fat quarter: $3
• material for strap, ~4 yards cotton webbing: $5.50
• polyester thread: $0.10
• labor, 16 hrs. @ $12/hour: $192
  • $12/hour based on $14/hour average for seamstress in Houston, but slightly lower due to skill level
• use of sewing machines and iron: $10
  • I couldn’t find any good sources for this, very rough estimate based on price of equipment

TOTAL: $218.60

This is a lot for an apron. If I had spent less time making it (~5 hours, amount of time I would expect to take when more familiar with the best techniques), it would be about $85, which is a lot more reasonable. It still is more than most people would pay for an apron, but this higher cost is simply a result of the fact that it is not mass produced.