I can’t believe I thought I’d finish sewing my apron in one go. It took four separate sessions, but I successfully learned how to operate one alone. And honestly, it was therapeutic… except for the box stitches. The good thing is that I didn’t break anything. Come follow me as I take you through my process.

Step 1. Mark and cut a mock apron on box paper

I initially followed the suggested size for a small, but I am 5 feet so I had to significantly trim off a few inches vertically.

Step 2. Cut the fabric following the mock apron size. 

Once I trimmed the fabric, I realized the neckline was way too wide and would gape when worn. I ended up significantly narrowing the section from the waist up to the neckline. I used the additional fabric to cut two waist straps and a neck strap.

Step 3. Hem where you want to sew 

This step required a lot of pins. I folded the raw edge, ironed it in place, and then pinned it down. I learned the hard way that pinning before ironing causes the fabric to melt around the hot metal.

Step 4. Figure out how to use the sewing machine

This was the trickiest part, but luckily YouTube had my back. I found a tutorial to thread the Juki and wind the bobbin, then practiced on scrap fabric before touching my final piece. I set the machine to stitch length 3 and used the needle plate guides to keep my lines straight. At each edge, I added a few backstitches so nothing would come undone. For the bottom edge, I liked the natural frayed look, so I did a simple straight hem to keep it from fraying further. Then the main apron was finished.

Next came the straps. I quickly realized I had cut the fabric too thin, which made it hard to control under the machine. I ended up recutting wider strips for thicker straps, which gave me much better control.

At first, I was using stitch length 1, which makes very short, dense stitches. That works well for thin fabric, but on thick, layered straps it caused problems. The needle had to punch through multiple layers too frequently, which made the machine struggle and the fabric harder to feed smoothly. By increasing the stitch length to 3, each stitch became longer. That meant fewer needle penetrations per inch, less resistance going through the thick layers, and smoother fabric feeding under the presser foot. The result was that the box stitches went through the straps more easily and evenly.

Anyways, here’s the final product on!

Cost Breakdown

Cleaned workspace