Little Boy's Apron

Recently my friend asked me if I would be interested in making an apron for her nephew.  I was already getting ready to sort through all of my fabrics, so while I was sorting I pulled out a pile of fabrics I thought he might like and sent her the picture.  A couple of the fabrics (and some of my favorites) were ones that my friend's mother had given me shortly before she passed. Sentimental as I am, I was glad that she chose one of these for his apron.

Apron body

I really love this striped green and off-white fabric.  I had previously made a pair of boy's pants from it for another friend.  I have in the past been a bit wary of patterns, including stripes, but I think this one has helped pull me out of my shell.

Neck strap and ties

My friend says her nephew's favorite color is brown. I remembered I had a small amount of brown bias binding left and thought if I had enough it would make a good accent color to the green.

Pocket

For the sides and the hem I turned them under twice, pinned them, and stitched them down.

Sides and Hem pinned

Sides and Hem pinned

For the thread I had two choices: the green that matches the fabric (I know it doesn't look like it matches in the photos, but trust me, it does) or the dark brown that matches the bias tape for a slight contrast effect.  I decided I liked the contrast idea better and went with that.

is it silly that I really like this picture?

 For the pocket I wanted the stripes to run at 90 degrees to the main body of the apron.  I also thought it would look nice to have the top of it with a stripe of the brown bias binding.

Pocket hems pinned, and the bias tape attached to the wrong side... oops

For the side edges I folded the bias over the raw edge and pinned it in place.  Then I pinned the bias to the top edge such that the side seams will be encased as well.

Sides and top binding pinned into place

For the neck strap I wanted something durable and fairly uniform in thickness.  The fabric strip I cut was roughly 3x the width of the finished strap.  For the ties, having just looked at all of the aprons from my grandma I decided to use her usual technique.  The edges have a narrow hem and the ends are folded down into a triangle.  I have fond memories as a child of poking my fingers into the pockets those triangles make. lol

Neck strap and ties pinned

 After stitching the brown bias tape to the top I pressed it flat and then flipped it over the front, pressing the green fabric down.  If you stitch 1/32 to 1/16 outside of the pre-made fold of the bias tape (toward the edge, not the middle) it should fold back over easily and none of the wrong side of the fabric should show on the front.

After pulling out the original stitches on the pocket, I re-stitched on the bias binding there in the same way I did for the top edge of the apron body.

yeah,... that's better

I also decided that the pocket needed to be slightly shorter to look right so I stitched it a bit farther from the edge than originally planned.

Pressed to the front

You can see I had quite a bit to trim off of the new pocket edge, but I like the new pocket dimensions a lot better.

Since they were already pinned, I stitched down the edges of the ties.

Little triangle pocket at the end of the ties

Topstitching on the neck strap

After attaching the neck strap I topstitched down the bottom edge of the bias strip at the top.  For the bias at the edges, being so narrow, I used a decorative stitch. This both added a little something interesting and attached the binding a little more securely.  With this done I attached the straps and topstitched the pocket on.

Ta-da! Apron!

I'm pretty happy with it, and hope he is too.  He has a little set of play pots and pans and his mother and aunts are all great cooks so I'm sure he'll have ample opportunity to use it. :)

Hope your Monday has started off your week with a smile.