Making a Child's Apron

As I mentioned in my previous post, Miss 6 has two birthday parties to attend on Saturday, and as part of my aim to improve my "household" skills this year, I wanted to make something for the girls instead of buying and gifting more plastic (and packaging). I figured aprons were easy-peasy, even for someone with my extremely limited sewing skills.

Ideally (and I aim to do this in the future), I would have liked to make them out of something preloved, but since I was a bit time-limited and there was nothing suitable at the thrift shop I dropped some bags of things off to, I just went to Spotlight. I know next to nothing about fabric, but I figured something 100% cotton was the go, and found some hot pink 100% cotton drill fabric for $5 a metre.

My sister gave my girls some really cute aprons for Christmas, so I used one of them as a template for the ones I wanted to make. Since I am lazy resourceful, I used the selvedge of the fabric as the bottom edge - one less seam to sew.


Since I didn't pre-wash the fabric first, I allowed a couple of extra centimetres (plus the seam allowance) around each edge of the apron. I marked it out with a pencil, since the marks would be covered up by the seam afterwards.

And ended up with two basic apron shaped pieces of fabric. **Updated: The dimensions of the apron including seam allowance are: top edge 18cm/ 7", side seams 38cm/ 15", bottom edge 45cm/ 17.5".**

They looked a bit plain though, so I grabbed an offcut and cut out two pocket-sized pieces of fabric as well.

Originally, I was going to pin the seams, but decided it would be far easier to iron the seams first (folded over twice, so no need for on overlocker/ serger) and then just sew them, which is what I did. I was worried about what to do on the curved bits, but by happy accident, the drill fabric I had decided to use had enough "give" in it to fold over on the curve really nicely and it sits quite flat, yay! I did the same with the pockets (ironing the seams), sewed the top seam and then sewed around the other three edges straight into the middle of the apron.

I looked for some canvas tape (I think it was called "belting"?) at Spotlight but they didn't have any narrow enough for use as the apron straps, so I figured I'd makes some out the of the fabric scraps, but when I got to this stage I thought it needed a contrast so when I had to go out and get groceries later, I found some white 100% cotton "binding tape", which would work really well. I also found iron-on embroidered decorations (in all my sewing ignorance, I didn't know such things existed, LOL), so grabbed a couple of those too :-)

And the end result: Ta da!

Yes, I know it's not that exciting to anyone with an ounce of domestic capability, but I was rather proud of how they turned out! Cute :-)

In terms of the overall cost, the fabric was $5 a metre, and I used around 80cm for the two, so that component was around $2 each apron. The thread would have cost about 20c each, the tape around 50c, and the iron-on motif was $2.49 for a pack of two. So the final cost worked out at around $3.95 each apron! On the way out of Spotlight I had noticed some kids aprons and checked the price - admittedly they were "Dora the Explorer" so you pay more for that, but they were $12.95 each (with no pocket). Not a bad saving! Had I used a scrap bit of contrasting fabric to make my own motif (which is what I had originally intended but lack the expertise to figure out how to do - something I will work on for next time) I would have saved another $1.25 - which would have made the total cost of the apron a mere $2.70! Imagine what you could do with 100% scrap or thrifted fabric?

To the final present pack I added a small wooden mixing spoon ($1 each) and two small pink, heart shaped cake tins ($9), so the final presents cost about $14 per child (about $6 less than I normally feel obliged to spend).

So not super-cheap in the end because I didn't have the time to shop around the find the small rolling pins, whisks and bowls that I originally wanted (which I know are also about $1 each), which would have worked out substantially cheaper. In future I will keep an eye out for such things and put them away for next time I need them.