DIY Flirty Apron

I haven't blogged anything in a while, I have been sooo busy with home improvement, my cake business, and 3 kids I really have no free time these days.  But I really wanted to share this project.

Ok, I no I should have taken a pic of some one wearing it, and I had a pic of myself in it but I don't like pictures of myself lol But take my word for it, it's super cute when you wear it!  The best part is that it only cost $8 to make! But it is pretty time consuming, especially if you have men and children to attend to, but it's not difficult to make.

Here's the materials you will need:

Materials
1 cheapo plasticy canvas type apron (I got mine from the 99 Cent Only Store)
1 fat quarter bundle (Wal Mart has a pretty cool selection for $7.47, which is where I got mine)
Neutral thread to match your material
Needle (Yes, there is some hand sewing in my instructions, but will get to that later)
Scissors
Ruler

And here are the pretty simple instructions, I wish I had taken pictures, but hopefully I can thoroughly explain.  The cool thing about this easy apron is that you don't really have to perfect. In most patterns, if you don't measure just right, it will throw the whole thing off, but you can't really mess up this one, just make sure you get the width of the ruffles right so they will overhang each other correctly.

Instructions

1. Start by measuring your apron. From the waist down, you want the apron to be 12 inches long, mine was a little longer so I cut it and hem it.  The cool thing is, you don't have to hem it perfectly because you can't see the bottom of the apron, so just do a rough cut, fold, and stitch it up.
2.  The next thing you want to do it make the fabric strips that will turn into ruffles.  Now, don't worry about exact measurements here.  The fat quarters that I got were about 23 inches wide and about 18 inches long.  So you want to to cut 6 inch strips lengthwise from your quarters. This is a diagram of what I mean, the red lines are the cuts you are going to make.  So from each piece of fabric, you will have (2) 23 inch long and 6 inch wide fabric strips.  Sew the 2 strips together so that you have one 46"x 6" piece of material. Do this for each pattern so that you end up with 4 fabric strips to make ruffles.

 

3. Now, hem the sides and bottom of each strip, leaving the top unfinished. 
4. Here's the hand sewing part.  It's the only way I know how to do ruffles.  Fold the top of one of the fabric strips over a quarter inch, thread your needle with a about 2 feet of thread. Start a running stitch along the fold at the top of a fabric stitch and go for about 5 mm and then pull the sting tight, do a back stitch to lock and continue for the rest of the length of fabric.  I was told that you can loosen the bobbin tension on your machine and stitch to parallell lines for the length of the fabric, don't lock them with a back stitch, and then pull the bottom (bobbin) strings of each stitch so that the fabric scrunches then tie the two strings together to lock the stitches.  This technique didn't work out too well for me, but that's no reason you shouldn't try it.
5. Repeat step 4 for each fabric strip so that you have 5 scrunched fabric strips.
6. Next, figure out where to attach your ruffles to your apron.  The first will go at the waist line (I like to draw dotted lines to help keep everything straight.)  The next ruffle will go 4 inches down from the first ruffle and so forth so that the last ruffle should lay pretty much on the hem line (It's ok to put it a little higher, you won't see it.  So when you attach the ruffles, each should over lap the next by about 1 inch.  Then you just straight stitch your ruffles in place.
7. Now, for the waist band and ties.  I didn't have enough of any one material to make the ties as long as I wanted them ( you can make them as long as you want, just be sure you'll be able to tie them so I made a patchwork waistband.  I cut 3 inch wide strips our of the the remaining fabric and then cut them down to 2"x3" rectangles. Here's another lovely diagram.  The top 2 rows are the strips already cut out for the ruffles, the bottom 2 are the rectangles for the patchwork waistband.

8. Place 2 rectangles, right sides facing each other and sew the 3" inch sides together, repeat so that you have a strip that is however long you want it and 3 inches wide. Then fold the entire length in half long ways so that the right sides are facing each other again and sew the entire length.  Then flip right side out, (This was a little tricky, I tied about 2 feet of thread to a safety pin and then ran the safety pin through the inside of the strip then attached it to the other end while holding the loose end of the thread [in my teeth lol]. then started pulling the safety pin back through the middle so it was right side out). Then iron flat your strip of material so that the seem is in the middle of the back side and hem the two ends. Then just straight stitch it on your apron, just barely overlapping the top of the first ruffle.

And there you have it, it may look like a lot but I know there are people out there like me who need very particular instructions.  So good luck!