Sewing an Apron | ENGI 210: Prototyping and Fabrication

I really thought I could do this in one try… It took me ages but I finally finished my apron project. Considering this is the first time I’ve done a sewing project, I’m pretty proud of the fact that I finished and that I didn’t break anything! Here are the steps I took (hopefully those who stumble upon this blog post in the future will learn from my mistakes)!

Step 1: Making my pattern

I used this guide from the instructions to cut out the outline of a medium-sized apron onto pattern paper, and then used the pattern paper to cut the appropriate amount of fabric. After taking a few years to cut one side of the fabric, Professor Bisesti stepped in and ripped the fabric along a dead straight line in about a second! I’ve quickly realized there are levels to this and I am on the lowest one.

Step 2: Hemming

This is where things started to get a bit harder. To do the double hem, I folded the edges of my fabric twice, and then ironed. I later learned while working together with my friend Jason and Professor Bisesti that it is actually much easier to iron after each of the folds. Due to my mistakes in this step, my hems were just a liiiiiiittle uneven but overall alright so I proceeded to pin down my double hem. Professor Bisesti came in clutch once again.

Pinned Fabric

Step 3: Sewing the edges

Once I got the sewing machine correctly threaded, this step honestly wasn’t too bad. It was threading the sewing machine correctly that look me AGES. I felt like I was following the instructions very carefully and doing the same steps each time, but the machine magically decided to work on my fifth try. After carefully inspecting the machine, my guess is that on my previous attempts I forgot to pull the thread around the sub-tension knob.

After practicing on scrap fabric for about 15 minutes, I moved on to my actual apron with the thread spacing right around 3. Because of my practice, this was pretty straightforward, I just had to make sure I correctly did the backstitches on the ends so that my stitches didn’t come undone.

As you can see, my stitches were a little uneven in some places, but that was because of the uneven hemming. Had I done a bit of a better job on the double hems, I think I could’ve made these stitches a lot straighter.

Step 4: The straps

Next, I had to sew on the straps using the box stitch. I practiced the box stitch a few times on a separate piece of fabric, and when I felt pretty confident I moved on to my actual apron. Because my straps are pretty thin, I had to set the stitch spacing to length 1. With the box stitches it was extremely hard to align everything (especially the diagonal stitches), but I think they turned out relatively okay.

Here is the final product:

And here is my workspace after cleanup:

Cost Breakdown

Materials
- 1 yard of denim fabric: $14.30
- 1 roll of thread: $2.99
Labor/Rentals
- Sewing machine rental (1 day): $25
- Iron rental (1 day): $5
- 7 hours of labor ($7.25/hour): $50.75

Total cost: $98.04

Reflection

I’m really proud of my work, considering it was my first time doing a project like this. The apron fits me well, and there is nothing loose. If I were to do it again, I would set myself up for more success in the hemming stage and practice my box stitch a bit more. I have also realized while writing this blog post that I should take pictures more frequently as I progress through my work.