apron!

I made an apron you guys! Literally within like five hours of getting my sewing machine. Here's how it turned out:

I realize there is a giant mess behind me.. for the record, none of that is mine. This isn't even my room I had to go out in search of a decent mirror to take this picture in since there was no one around to take it for me =(

This is my adorable little sewing machine, I bought it online at like 1:30am on an impulse buy a few days ago and it just got here (okay so its taken me a few days to actually blog this, I apologize). I only paid like $17 for it including shipping here is a >LINK< to where I got it. Heads up though I think the price changes on it daily so don't hate me- it was $14.99 when I bought it. 

How cute is this? So here's the story: this material was at one point a skirt, almost a pencil type cut to it, it belonged to my little sister -->

(this picture is us at Christmas last year- 2010. No, she doesn't have a cool website or anything for me to link you to, sorry)

Anyway it was hers like forever ago and we recently went through a TON of old junk (because we moved) and got rid of a TON of junk, anyway, this skirt was among the piles and piles of clothes that we have outgrown (be it size or taste) and I demanded that she keep it because I like the fabric. She insisted on throwing it out because she would never wear it so I told her it didn't have to be a skirt and that she should make an apron out of it (she likes to cook- like real food and whatnot- weird right?) and she caved. A couple hours later she tried putting it back in the throw out pile and I caught her, she said she didn't know how to make it an apron so I took it from her and told her I would do it for her. This was back in like December. 

So I got my sewing machine and found the skirt and started taking out all the seams. This would've been much easier with a seam ripper - I now see why they invented them. 

Eventually I had a pile of nice neat fabric to work with

I started by folding the front panel of the skirt in half(ish) so make the bottom of the apron

Yes, those are roller set clips, sorry, I do hair, that's what I have lying around.. in literally every corner of everywhere (that or bobby pins- it's ridiculous)

I'll admit I was a little afraid of this thing to begin with, I'm mildly accident prone and all I could see when I looked at this thing was that needle going through one of my fingers.  After sewing a couple seams I'm pretty confident that its a fairly safe machine and I shouldn't be all that worried about it. 

I had some tension issues to begin with but I got it all sorted out in the end

I cut out and hemmed a piece to make the top of the apron from one of the two back skirt panels and attached it to the bottom portion

*disclosure* I didn't measure any of this- sorry, I just kind of held it up to myself and eyed it, my sister is pretty close to the same size as me so I went with it

I rolled up an edge of the other back panel, sewed it and cut it off to make one of the ties then decided that I was left with an exposed edge and needed to change my tactics a little bit

So for the rest I cut a strip and folded the edges inward then sewed it together and I was much happier with these results, I attached them where they needed to go and voila!

Houston we have apron. 

I didn't add any pockets and I don't think I will, I thought about and debated it for a while when I was making it but decided that the purpose is to keep her clothes from getting stained while shes playing in the kitchen and she didn't need a pocket for that. 

Enjoy! =]