Make it Monday

It’s Christmas in July on the Pine Needles blog today! As I was looking around at all the fun fabric in the shop the other day and brainstorming for the Make It Monday post, I was drawn to all the cute Christmas fabric that has arrived already. I don’t know why, but I enjoy sewing for Christmas more in the summer time than in December… maybe the heat does something to my brain!? I think it’s the low stress of summer. If I start now I’m sure to have plenty of time to finish up my holiday projects by December 25^th… right?

One of our favorite parts of Christmas has got to be the sweets. Baking with the kids takes on a new meaning during the holidays, becoming a fun family tradition. How adorable will your little helpers look baking and delivering treats wearing a cute new Christmas apron! Tie one up with an easy box mix and a bow and you have an adorable gift for a little girl or boy.

This little child’s apron is super simple to make. You’ll only need to grab 2 fun Christmas fat quarters and a 5 inch strip of fabric for the ties and binding (I’d ask for a 1/6 of a yard to give yourself a little wiggle room)

You’ll begin by taking one of your fat quarters and folding it in half wrong sides together and ironing it flat. This will be your main apron piece. The folded piece of fabric gives you a nice weight to the apron, where a single layer of fabric is sometimes a little thin for an apron.

You’ll need to create a template for your pockets.  To make mine, I grabbed a dinner plate, which measured 11 1/2" across. You can see below that I traced my dinner plate to make to curved lines.

Fold your pocket fabric in half, right sides together, and pin your template in place. Cut twice making a total of 4 pocket pieces.

Sew your pockets along the two curved lines. Leave the ends open.

Turn your pockets right side out and press. I then added a bit of cute trim that I happened to have in my stash. You could add a ruffle like me, rick rack, or pom poms...just to name a few ideas. Top stitch it along the smaller, top curve of the pocket.

After you have both pockets finished, pin them in place on the main apron piece like you see I’ve done below.

Close up you can see I added a little tuck to the bottom on the pocket. This helps puff out the pocket a little bit, looking cute and adding room inside.

Top stitch along the bottom curve of the pocket, leave the top open.

Once you are to this step, set your apron aside and make your binding. Take your 5 inch X WOF (width of fabric, usually about 44”) strip and cut in length wise so you have a piece that is 2” X WOF and a piece that is 3” X WOF.  The 2” piece will be your binding. To create your binding, fold your fabric in half and press, then fold the sides into the middle and press again (see picture below). To create your straps you’ll take the 3” strip and do the same, except to make the straps a little wider I only folded the sides in about a quarter of an inch, instead of all the way to the middle line.

Slip your apron inside the binding and top stitch the two sides and the bottom, leave the top without binding. You’ll catch the sides of the pockets inside the binding.

In the center of the apron I made a little tuck again, a lot like I did with the pocket.

Slip the whole apron into the piece you created for the strap and top stitch it like you did with the binding. You’ll catch the top of the pockets inside the strap piece.

Finished!

It's a shame I couldn't get one of my little kids models to help me out for the picture. My youngest was wearing a t-shirt with kitty cats and flowers paired with a pair of Halloween pajama pants patterned with glow in the dark skeleton bones. Thanks to some photo cropping you can hardly see her outfit. I couldn't get her to change and I didn't want to press the issue. But... if you'd like to see this hilarious outfit you can head to my blog and check it out! MyCottonCreations.blogspot.com