Tutorial: How To Make A Child's Apron

All this took was a yard of fabric, a spool of ribbon and a 3 year old boy willing to let his mom use him as a model.

Here's my daughter wearing it but she's only 1 so it was a bit big on her:

There were lots of good apron patterns on the web but I wanted something super girly with lots of ruffles so I used this free Home Depot apron as a guide and made my own pattern.

Here are my pieces. The bottom piece is folded with the fold on the very bottom. If I had it to do over I would make each piece's edges either slanted or straight so they were all the same. You'll see why later. My measurements are as follows:

TOP:
7.5" wide on top
9.5" wide on bottom
8.5" tall

MIDDLE:
9.5" tall by 27" wide

BOTTOM:
8" tall by 36" wide (then fold and iron so it's 4" tall)

I hemmed the sides of each and also across the top of the piece on top. This would be a good time to add your neck and waist straps but I forgot and had to figure that part out later. If you do it now you can hide the strap's raw edges in the hem

I then used a french seam to attach them all together since I don't have a serger. This makes the back of the apron (or the "inside") look more clean. I then sewed a straight line just above the seam to hold the french seam in place instead of letting it just hang there sticking out (do this from the right side so you can make sure your stitch line is straight).

Although the name is intimidating, a french seam is so very simple. All you do is sew the pieces wrong sides together first, then sew them right sides together to hide the raw edges of the seam allowance. TIP: after sewing the wrong sides together, trim the seam allowance so there are no frays sticking out and so there's less bulk to have to hide.

Here's what the inside or "wrong" side will look like:

See how the top piece and middle piece don't fit together very well? That's why you need to make sure each piece's sides match eachother (slanted or straight, not both).

Hopefully you already have your straps attached by now but I did not. So I cut my ribbon, used a lighter on the edges to keep it from fraying and ironed the two neck straps (each 14.5" long) as pictured below:

I very carefully attached them to the top on each side



Then I took my longer piece of ribbon (57") and sewed it right on top of the waist's seam in order to cover up my little mistake.



And there you have it!

Faux Vinyl Tile

Looking for a cute home decor item you can make with items you probably have on hand?

Check out The Hybrid Chick's great tutorial here to make your own tile

A few tips:

Home Depot will cut your tile for free even if you don't buy it there

If you don't have Photoshop just use funky fonts in Paint or Word

Don't be stingy with the Mod Podge when adhering the paper to the tile

Hooded Towel

I found a super simple tutorial for a hooded bath towel from Make And Takes here. She adds appliques and bias tape to make it even cuter (perfect for a gift) but mine is plain and simple with no frills... lucky for me my kid loves it anyway because he thinks it's a superhero cape :) The only thing I did differently was rounded the back of the hood (by tracing a dinner plate) to get rid of the point.

I presented this tutorial to a group of women in my church tonight and got some great feedback with even more ideas to try out. One woman used to make these using 2 washcloths instead of half a hand towel (if you decide to use a hand towel, I suggest cutting it even smaller than just in half as the hood is pretty long otherwise). Another woman said to use the leftover half of the hand towel to add triangle pockets to the top corners of the inside so little ones can put their hands in there and hold it on. I'm so doing that!!! Lastly, someone else mentioned adding ears to the hood. CUTE.

I'll definately be making more of these.

Mason Jar Soap Dispenser

Here is the tutorial for turning a mason jar into a soap dispenser by Intimate Weddings. It's so much cuter than the little $1 one's I get from Smiths. I always use my .35 soft soap coupons when they have their deal where all coupons under a dollar are worth $1. And since this was free to do too I was excited to try it. Free plus free equals awesome. I spray painted the lid with brushed nickle (it was originally gold and said Kerr) since I already had some for other house projects. Give it a shot!

Wood Blocks

I had a bit of fun with my Cricut for the holidays :) I bought this great program called Make The Cut that makes it so you don't have to buy and use cartridges. You can create whatever you want on your computer then cut it with your Cricut.


I mostly just used it to cut out letters using my favorite font but I did find this soccer ball image:


The other great thing about it is you can overlap the letters to cut a word as one piece instead of individual letters:


And I guess I forgot to take a picture of the gift I made for my mom using a block the same size as the "Believe" block; it said "Grandma" and underneath that word it said "Established 2007" since that's when my son, her first grandchild, was born.

Cute. Ness.

Oh and one little thing I found was to wrap the sets that have many blocks using cellophane (that clear wrapping paper) so they stay together the way you want them displayed and the person opening it won't have to unwrap it in order to see what it looks like. If you're mailing it though, do what my friend did for me when she gave me a set and take a picture of them set up then include that in the box.

BTW all of these were made with letters cut from paper, not vinyl. I'm still a little gun shy about cutting my precious vinyl for the first time! lol

EDITED TO ADD: In this original post I never explained how I made the blocks because when I gave these gifts to my cousins, one said to her 7-year-old niece "Did you see what Star made? I don't know how she did it!" and her reply was "It's pretty obvious." lol It was awesome.

But for those of who don't find it obvious ;) all you do is buy the wood (2x4s or whatever you like) at Home Depot, mark them to the size you want, saw them, sand them, paint them, cut paper, distress edges of paper with Distress Ink, Mod Podge paper to the block, let dry then Mod Podge over the paper and stick on the letter you cut with your Cricut, then after it dries Mod Podge once more. The end.