Homemade Aprons: A Tutorial

I’ve featured homemade aprons on my blog twice now.

Remember these?  Thought I’d share musings and tutorial on how I made them…

The first apron was a drastic refashion; I used a second hand skirt as my starting point,
adding a ruffle from a hand-me-down dress

(I only have the cannibalized remains of the dress to show)

and fabric scraps.

Refashioning an apron is just about as easy as making one from scratch; you just have to see existing clothing as yardage.

The second apron is sister to the first; I still had strips of fabric from the second hand skirt and hand me down dress to use as ruffles; I added more ruffles using scraps pieced from my scrap pile. Notice these aprons really are all about ruffles.

Homemade Apron  (ruffled) Tutorial:

My hopefully helpful diagrams are based on this inspiration apron, a gift from my friend Stephanie:

I’ll be honest; my inspiration apron is VERY loosely interpreted in my homemade aprons. I prefer…coloring outside the lines.

Cut your apron parts. You may need to piece ruffles together…since most fabric doesn’t come 80″ off the bolt, nor is there that much width in thrifted skirts and dresses. (If you’re using new fabrics rather than scraps or thrifted clothing, plan on about 1/2 a yard for each of the ruffles and sash… you can make another apron for a small friend out of leftovers).

Cutting Measurements: This apron ties almost closed in the back on me; my waist is 26 inches… give or take. There is plenty of room for a much larger waist, and some room for a smaller one, in the pattern widths I show. You can proportionally increase or decrease the widths based on how you want the apron to fit, and based on your waist measurement.

The base ultimately will be entirely covered by ruffles. I used plain white muslin. Here is a picture of the “Base” in the apron that I used as inspiration for my own projects:

Once you’ve cut out/possibly pieced together your pieces (ahem), HEM. Hem the bottoms of all the ruffles, and the sides of apron base, using a narrow (1/4″) hem.

Time to start ruffling! If you already know how to ruffle, you can skim this. Don’t miss special notes about Ruffle One though, or my musings on artistic license.

A ruffle starts with basting/gathering stitches, 2 rows across the top of the ruffle.   The first row about half an inch from the top, the second 1/8″ further down.  You can  baste  by hand (tedious) or by setting your sewing machine to the longest straight stitch possible, and sewing a gathering stitch. I use a heavy duty thread in my bobbin so it won’t break when I pull it to gather (always pull the bobbin thread to gather). You could also use a ruffling or gathering foot, which would be amazing  and so cool.  I checked into that…too expensive and/or too limiting for me (the gathering foot only gathers one fulness).  Once you’ve sewn your two rows of gathering stitches, pull threads from both rows at the same time (either your bobbin threads, or your hand-sewn thread).

Notice…a couple of things. A) You’re gathering ruffles 2 & 3 to the width of your base. Although in the diagram above I say “any ruffle”, I mean  ruffles 2&3.  Really.  If you follow my diagram (and no one says you have to), your 80 inch ruffles  (2& 3) will be shortened at the top to 40 inches after gathering, which exactly matches the width of your apron base. B) I’ll reiterate: You don’t gather the very first, or top ruffle yet (Ruffle 1). You’ll be attaching it very last, after you’ve gathered the top of the base, so the gathered length will be different than ruffles 2 & 3. C) While this tutorial shows three ruffles, and my inspiration apron had three ruffles, I used more than three ruffles. That’s called artistic license, and it’s frowned upon in some backwards cultures. I’m covert about it.

With all but one of your ruffles gathered, it’s time to attach them, strategically.  You might make sure, at this point, that nothing has gone terribly amiss, and that your three ruffles, placed on the apron base, cover it well.  If not, cut the apron base down a little. Mischances and conundrums happen to the best of us…we can adapt.

First attach the bottom ruffle, using a 5/8″ seam, sewing it to the bottom of the base, right sides together…the top of the ruffle lined up neatly with the bottom of the base.

Next attach the second ruffle, about five inches above the already attached ruffle 3 (making sure that the hem of the second ruffle covers a little more than half an inch of ruffle 3). I sewed ruffle 2 right on top of the base, leaving the unfinished edge exposed. I knew I’d be covering the unfinished gathered edge with the next ruffle…plus I’d serged that edge already.

Now it’s time to gather the top of the apron base:

Notice that the gathered width at the top of the base is about 25 inches. With the base gathered, you’re ready to gather your last Ruffle (Ruffle #1). Instead of gathering it to 40 inches as you did with Ruffles 2 & 3, you’ll gather it to 25, to match the top of your apron base.

Lining up the top of your gathered apron base and the top of Ruffle One (right side base to wrong side ruffle), sew the last ruffle on. You’re almost done.

Now it’s time to sew on the sash:

Be sure to match the center of your sash with the center of your apron. I find centers simply by folding the sash and the almost done apron in half and marking centers with a bright pin. Then I line the bright pins up. You’re sewing the right side of your unfinished sash to the wrong side or inside of your apron. This is so you can press seam allowances (standard 5/8″) to the inside of the sash, fold the sash over the front of the apron to your first sash/apron seamline with the right side of the sash out on top of the right side of the apron, and topstitch it all closed neatly. From end of sash, over the top edge of the apron, to the other end of the sash. Here’s a diagram and pictures that will hopefully illustrate:

Well done, darlings! Have a chocolate!

And if you love the aprons you’ve seen featured here, click either the giveaway button at the top or at the bottom of this post–or better yet, both– to enter to win. And visit the hostesses  and savor their blogs:  Tabetha at “The Closet Intellectual”, and Meghan at “Eat.Live.Make”.

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