Today y’all are in for a special treat! I have permission to reprint a fun DIY project from Lazing on a Sunday Crafternoon: Little Projects for People with Just a Little Time and a Little Skill (Allen & Unwin, May 2014) by Eliza Muldoon (affiliate link below). This book of 52 ideas for a whole year’s worth of Sunday crafting requires only basic skills and utilizes simple household items. It is full of great projects that are can be done by yourself or with your kids. I love useful things so I asked permission to reprint the craft on how to make a child’s apron. I think you will love Eliza Muldoon’s DIY kids apron- it is so cute and would make an adorable DIY gift as well as a really useful item for children to have while crafting or helping in the kitchen.
DIY Apron For Kids
reprint below (craft #12 from the book)
How To Make An Apron For Children
I have been lucky enough to find a few cute vintage aprons lately. I only need them once a year when I teach art as therapy, but when I see a hand-embroidered and trimmed apron in an op shop for 80 cents. How can I just leave it there? I haven’t found any kids’ ones though, so I thought I would make an apron for my daughter. There do seem to be a lot of little aspiring chefs around at the moment.
Idea and inspiration
I love dress-ups and how easily kids can put on an apron and spend the next half hour preparing food, or how they put on ‘Janey socks’ and break into dance moves. I try putting on tracksuit pants in the hope that it will inspire me to exercise—maybe one day.
Time taken 45 minutes
What we used
- Fabric for the apron—this was a 1-m square piece left over from Christmas gift-wrapping
- Small piece of fabric for a pocket
- An iron
- Sewing machine
- Needle and thread
- Measuring tape
- Ribbon—enough to go around the recipient and tie a bow at the back
Waist Apron With Pockets- Step By Step Tutorial
What I did
First the child’s apron preparation
- To work out the size of the apron, I measured loosely around Lotte’s hips to decide the width. For the length, I wanted it to go a bit past her knees. I settled on 85 cm wide ∞ 35 cm long, and cut the fabric to size.
- I chose a 10-cm square piece from my patchwork square stash for the pocket.
Now for the child’s apron construction
- First, I ironed a hem on all four sides of the apron, and sewed the hem using a basic straight stitch.
- Then I ironed a hem on the four sides of the patchwork square, but only stitched one side of the square. This became the top of the pocket.
- I stitched the pocket to the apron on the remaining three sides. I justguessed where to put it. (No surprises that it was off-centre!)
- Across the top of the apron, just below the seam, I sewed a very loose straight stitch by hand and gathered it. I wanted the gathered width to go just around Lotte’s hips, but by this stage she’d run off so I just guessed. It worked though.
- Finally, I sewed the ribbon across the gathering, hiding the white stitch on the white stripe. I left a bit of the gathering visible at the top because I thought it looked sweet.
Child’s Apron Variations
- You can make it less flouncy by just folding three pleats at the top instead of gathering it. To do this just fold about 5 cm or so at the centre of the fabric and then add two more folds halfway along either side.
- You could add vertical seams from the bottom to the top of the pocket to make smaller sections that could happily hold little utensils.
- You could make an apron in this way for grown-ups too—simply adjust the fabric measurements to suit.
AND THE LITTLE ONE
Lotte was involved in the fabric selection—I thought her choices were mighty cute! She didn’t stick around for the sewing, though; she was already playing with her toy stove and bringing me ‘baked goods’. When I gave this to her, she said, ‘It’s so pretty. Everyone watch me run around the kitchen table in my apron.’ (Because that is what one does when one puts on an apron.)
If you enjoyed this tutorial for how to make a child’s apron and you’d like to check out more DIY craft projects, you can get the Lazing on a Sunday Crafternoon book at IPGBook.com and they even have eBook editions available. Thanks so much to the author Eliza Muldoon and IPG for allowing me to reprint this craft here. Do you think you will use these instruction for how to make a child’s apron? I’d love to see the fabrics you chose and how it turns out. Tag me @familyfocusblog!
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beritainfo says
thank you so much for the easy and adorable apron pattern for my little great daughter