I’ve always thought being able to sew seemed like such a handy and practical skill to have, I was excited to get the chance to learn for this assignment. After doing a few stitches in class, I decided to buy a beginner machine for myself and anticipate using it often now that I know how to do so. The first thing I did with my new machine was to learn how to load the bobbin and thread, and then I cut a scrap of fabric from an old tshirt and played around with the different stitches, changing stitch type, width, and length. I found one of the trickiest things when just starting was learning pedal discipline. It takes some getting used to to press gently for a slow feed rate, and to remember I can stop and restart to keep on track. My first few passes were pretty fast and messy. 

I have several aprons at home that have a variety of different designs and features. I decided to use my favorite apron as a starting point for my shop apron. Here’s an overview of the inspiration apron with notes about what design features I want to keep and some that I plan to change. 

Based on this, I drew up some plans for my shop apron. I made notes from my design notebook outlining my plan and pattern design. I ended up making some changes to this plan after cutting and test fitting the fabric, but it’s pretty close to what was actually done. 

Before starting on the body of my apron, I made the accessories. A matching pocket, shop towel (more of a napkin), and scrunchy. My sister, who sews, sent me a YouTube tutorial for sewing a scrunchy and I started with that, as it uses the smallest amount of fabric so it’s not much waste if I messed it up. The tutorial had a couple of seams that needed to be hand sewn, including a ladder stitch to finish the scrunchy. I found those bits much harder than machine sewing. I will have to practice my hand sewing.

After finishing my accessories, I began work on the body of the apron- measuring, cutting, and hemming the body of the apron.

One change I made after beginning to make my apron is a change to the apron strap channel design. Originally, I planned to have those channels as separate fabric pieces. Essentially two tubes that get attached to the apron. However, after sewing the seam around the perimeter of the apron, I found the top to be a bit broad, and angled areas cutting closer under my arms than I’d like. In order to fix this and also provide a strap pass-through channel, I simply folded over that angled section about 1.5” and sewed the inside edge. This created a narrower span on the upper section of the apron and eliminated the need for the additional strap pass through pieces. Here I am test-fitting the apron before adding on the pocket, towel loop, and straps.

After finishing the body of the apron, I attached the pocket and the towel loop, utilizing a box stitch to attach the towel loop. 

Cost Type	Cost	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materials	Fabric	$2.99/yd	Joann.com	1.5 yds	$4.50
	Thread	$2.49/spool	Joann.com	1 spool	$2.50
	Strap material	$1.95/yd	Joann.com	3.75 yds	$7.31
Labor	Sewing Operator	$13.52/hr	Ziprecruiter.com	4hr	$54.08
	Prototyping Engineer	$38/hr	Ziprecruiter.com	2hr	$76
Overhead	Facility Cost (Machine Time)	$.013/hr	sewingiscool.com	4hr	$0.05
	Quality Control	$20.56	indeed.com	.25hr	$5.14
Design	Engineering and Development	N/A (covered in Prototyping Engineer)
	Iterations	N/A
Misc.	Waste and Scrap	$5.99/yd fabric $2.49/spool thread $1.95/yd Strap Material	See above	.5yd fabric 0.1 spool .33yd strap material	$3.90
Total					$153.47