Did I happen to mention that there are a couple of projects in The Naughty Secretary Club: The Working Girls Guide to Handmade Jewelry that involves sewing? Well there are, heck there is even embroidery! Yesterday I headed up to one of my favorite Austin stores Craft-o-Rama to have my friend and the owner Hayley help me transform one of those sewing projects from the book, the Casual Friday Necklace, into an apron for me to wear to CHA. Craft-o-Rama is where I teach my jewelry and business classes and also where I am having my book release party Saturday August 30th! Anywhoodle sure I have a sewing machine, but Craft-o-Rama has fabric, trim, huge cutting spaces, hot irons ready and most importantly ball fringe! I of course brought my camera along with me to show you just how dang easy this apron was to make!
First of all I chose the fabric for my apron. The necklace is aqua and red so I thought a bright yellow and white polka dotted material would be fun. Next step I drew out a rough idea of what I had envisioned my apron looking like. I openly admit that Hope got every last art gene left in our family so don't hold the drawing against me. The point was I knew I wanted to use the necklace I already had made as the part of the apron that went over my head, I just need to design the body.
Luckily I had brought my favorite vintage apron with me to show Hayley the style I was thinking of. Hayley being a much better seamstress than I quickly decided that we would just use it as our pattern and it worked out perfectly. She laid the apron right on top of my fabric and cut away. We did fold the bottom of the apron over because I wanted it a bit shorter.
Next I pinned bias tape from the start of neck of the apron where the necklace was down the sides to where it hit my waist. I left the extra bias tape long so that it could be what tied around my waist in the back. I did the same on both sides and then pinned more red bias tape as trim down the sides of the bottom half of my apron. This is of course after I ironed both the polka dotted fabric and the tape well. I hate the ironing part of sewing, barf. My definition of ironing is throwing my wrinkled clothes in the dryer with a wet towel. Anywhoodle I sewed the bias tape onto the apron and was sure to follow my stitch all the way down the lengths of the long pieces of bias tape that were going to tie in the back.
Hayley had whipped my up a cute pocket pattern and I picked some aqua and white polka dotted fabric out of their scrap bin. I ironed the fabric and folded it in half and cut out two pockets at once. We ironed the top seams over to make a little hem and then ran it through the machine with a zig zag stitch and red thread to hold it in place. From here I stood in the mirror and decided where I wanted my pockets to sit. I pinned more red bias tape around the pockets (the curve of the pockets was a bit tricky), then pinned the pockets to the apron then off to sew we go.
After the pockets were sewn into place it was time to attach the necklace. We used a red thread to sew the necklace into the neck of the apron. We followed the outline of the necklace with our stitches so that it did not take away from the design.
The very last step was ball fringe across the bottom, because you can never have too much ball fringe. I am pretty dang smitten on how it turned out and hope that it is a big hit next week at CHA. If you are going to be in Chicago for the convention stop by the Duncan booth, make some jewelry with me and check out the new apron in person!
Oh and you have to get a copy of The Naughty Secretary Club to learn how to make the necklace :) Don't forget you can pre-order now and it should be hitting book stores August 6th!