In class, we learned a little culinary term called Mise En Place, meaning “putting in place.” It’s the art of organizing, measuring, and preparing all the ingredients for a meal right before you start to cook. It’s a great practice for the kitchen.
Especially an engineering design one.
Ingredients prepared for the cutting board
But I would also like to introduce another culinary term that can be applied to prototyping and fabrication: Rechauffe, or reheating, rehashing, redoing, as I felt that applied very heavily in my process. But we’ll get to that later.
The appetizer
I started off by cutting out pattern-paper to guide the shape of the fabric. I varied off a bit from the sizing chart given, going for a 38″ full apron length and a 26″ half-waistband, I also went for an 18″ top length, giving me a 4″ taper on each side.
Once the general shape of the apron was cut, I then double-folded and ironed out the two long-sides of the apron, pinning them together to create a hem. I did this because I wasn’t fully confident in my abilities to do one long continuous stitch across the perimeter of the motor, so instead I opted to stitch the hem piece-by-piece.
Afterwards, I cut out a long strip of the same-color fabric to about 24″ which I also double-fold one each side to create a 1/4″ hemline. At the time, I thought 24″ was an appropriate length for the neck strap with give-or-take extra fabric to ensure it could fit above my head (I have a big noggin). But in hindsight… it was way too long.
For the waist-straps, I found some nice white-ribbon in the fabric graveyard I could use to attach the sides of the apron with a box-stitch. This is where another gross misestimation on my end occurred. I originally created the pattern paper shape with a proper position in mind. The top of the apron would start around the same area as my shirt collar, and the waist straps would then be situated around, well, my waist.
But since I didn’t have that in mind while creating my neck-strap, the neck strap was much longer, meaning my entire apron shifted down, and thus, my waist straps did not go around my waist.
It went around my butt.
And when I tried to force it around my waist, it just scrunched up my apron at the stomach. Which did not look good, to say the least.
With all these mistakes happening, something good was bound to happen. And it did. It came in the form of buttons! While scrounging around the OEDK, I was able to find a good assortment of cheap buttons, which I decided to handsew onto the straps of my neck.
This however meant I couldn’t just rely on the machine and had to actually learn how to sew, which deemed a lot harder than I thought. Luckily, there’s this nifty thing called, wait for it, YouTube, that had all the information in the world about sewing. So thanks very much
Emma Collins and
Becky Goldsmith for teaching me how to sew a button and how to do the beginner’s hand knot.
And with that, my apron was done! Now of course, there were still issues.
For one, this is not a box stitch. It’s more like a… oval stitch? And there was no cross-hatching. Instead I thought I could just go over the stitch multiple times to increase its strength. But alas, it just made it look awkward.
And now for the main issue I have with this apron. The handsewing. For a first-timer I was a bit proud. But to Emma and Becky, and probably the entire old lady sewing community on the internet, they’d probably be disappointed, bake me a batch of cookies and hot cocoa and lie to me that it looks “amazing.”
But I hate to disappoint granny.
That’s why I decided to make it up to my newfound grandmothers on the web, and decided that this apron would be version one. My first attempt.
The Main Course
Rechauffe: Redoing. Reusing. Rehashing. It means to take all your leftover ingredients, the crappy ones you keep behind because the taste of sauerkraut doesn’t go good with pork, and turn them into something new entirely. I decided to use all the amateur skills I learned with this attempt and reuse them for a better, cleaner, grandma-approved apron.
I went to the universal fabric center in Rice Village, and bought myself some nice fabric, ribbons and buttons, already with a creamy and black colour scheme in mind.
And with that, I simply went through the same steps of my previous apron but with the knowledge of my past mistakes. This time around I decided to go for a curved design at the top instead of the steady incline. I also based the dimensions off a different template instead, one that should be very familiar to any OEDK user. The Lab Assistant Aprons!
I grabbed one of the aprons and traced out my paper-pattern from that, and then readjusted some of the dimensions to better fit my body. I then decided to pin down the double-hem for the entire apron, not just side-by-side, as I planned to have one continuous seam for my entire fabric, instead of a ton of small repeated strokes.
Now, of course, I was a bit anxious, especially since my last apron wasn’t as precise as I’d like to be, but I persisted. Slowly and steady, I sewed through the apron, until I got one side completely down, and had to repivot and turn the corner. This is where I finally learned about something that would change my entire process: thread lengths. To be honest, I dismissed the knob at first, thinking I would never need it, but it was a game changer for making tight turns and angles that needed small intervals of movement.
And it definitely helped with the curved portion, which required very accurate and clean movement to get right. So by just keeping that same mindset, pressing down my foot slow and keeping control of my fabric, I was eventually able to get the entire hemline finished in one go.
There were still some issues, it wasn’t perfect (but what is?) as you can see in the image below, sometimes the thread clumped together or slightly unraveled, but compared to my first attempt, it was a much cleaner much better design in both quality and technique.
Afterwards, I sewed on the black ribbon for my neckstrap, this time only 15″ long, with a box stitch. And finished off the strap with those buttons I bought earlier. When I handsewed this time, I used a technique from another Emma Collins video where I hid the backstitch under preexisting thread to get a much cleaner and less tangly look. And then finished off the waiststraps, this time now in the proper place and height.
And with that, my second apron was done!
waiter, Check Please
Overall, I had a very fun (and patient) time creating my apron.
The main point of fabrication and prototyping is for iteration and brainstorming, to try again, again, again, and again, until you get it just right. And I think I learned that with my second attempt. My first apron may not have been that good, but it taught me the basics on which my next one was built on.
To end it off, here are my bill of materials:
- 1 yard of red fabric – $10.99
- 2 feet of white ribbon – $1.99
- Labor rate $10/hr: $10 x 3 = $30.00
- Machine overhead rate $5/hr: $5 x 2 = $10.00
2nd Apron: $71.97
- 1 yard of custom cream fabric – $39.99
- 2 yard of black ribbon – $1.99
- 2 Metallic Buttons – $4.99
- Labor rate $10/hr: $10 x 2 = $20.00
- Machine overhead rate $5/hr: $5 x 1 = $5.00
Final Check: $124.95
…plus a 15% tip, and you get $143.69, after all someone’s gotta clean the tables.
