Basic Apron Instructions (for all Aprons)

Basic for All Aprons: This is just for a basic Apron, no ribbons (except for the ties).

You will need: two woven kitchen dish towels. (you can get a five pack of  dishtowels at Target, which you can make up to 3 aprons with, because you actually cut one of the dishtowels in half for each apron).  I have also bought really cute ones from the Dollar store, Wal-Mart.. just about anywhere that sells them! The come in different sizes, so keep that in mind. The bigger the towel, the larger (width wise and lengthwise) your apron will be. You can ALSO use a "napkin" or a placemat for the "top" dishtowel, instead of another dishtowel. (but let's not get you too confused! LOL).

You will also need 1 1/2 yards of ribbon for the ties. The smaller the person you are giving the apron too, the shorter the ties can be. The 1 1/2 yards would be perfect for ANY size, because it will fit around larger sizes, and for smaller sizes, they can wrap it around twice and have it tie in the front as shown on the first two aprons above.

That's all you need for the basic Apron, then you can also add embellishments such as more ribbons, trims along the bottom of the apron, buttons and flowers.
Here are the basic Instructions:

Lay the dishtowel you want for the bottom of the apron, on the table or floor, horizontally (so the longest part of the apron is going horizontal).

Next take your other dish towel, and fold it in half, lengthwise, then cut (so you are only using HALF of the apron, but make sure you cut it lengthwise, so your two dish towel pieces are "short and fat", not long and skinny.

You can use the other half piece of dishtowel for another apron!  Or like I mentioned before, you can use a "placemat" or a napkin which are also good sizes for the "tops" of the aprons. But using a dishtowel, you get more for your money, because you can get two tops out of one dishtowel. 

 Then  lay it that half piece, in the middle and at the top of the dish towel already on the floor. Fold the top of the towel under slightly, so the edge is "clean" on top. The pin in place.

Next SEW or use "heat and bond new sew "tape" to adhere the top to the bottom. Only sew a seem along the TOP edge of the towels.

Next you want to cut the 1 1/2 yards of ribbon in half for the ties, so you have two 24" pieces.

Then sew on on each side of your apron at the top. I just folded over and stitched it under the back of the apron as shown..

So this is what it would look like from the front.

Easy as PIE! Again, if you don't have a sewing machine, this is something you can handstitch one, since the stitch is so short. Or you can use no sew tape and iron it on.

Then your BASIC Apron is done! This would be simple for kids, if you didn't want to add ribbons, but you can also easily sew on buttons, or other embellishments.

Now if you wanted to go further and do some trims on the apron too, here is the next step for that.

I found 5 coordinating ribbons, and the lengths will ONLY wide your top apron is and how wide your bottom apron is,

But basically I sewed trims under both the top dishtowel and the bottom dishtowel, or you can use heat and bond.

I also like to do the three ribbons across the front of the top apron. Here you can see I have it laid out (haven't cut the trims to the correct length yet, but I was just making sure I had them where I wanted them. So then you cut them down to size, and sew or iron on!

In the next pictures, you can see how I embellished the different aprons

This an apron I made for one of my Scarlet Lime Designers for Christmas (hopefully she isn't reading this! LOL). But as you can see, I embellished it with ribbons on the "top" towel, but also a lace trim along the bottom of the bottom towel, which I sewed on. I made the ties, long enough that you can double it to the front and tie a bow in the front of the Apron.

Here is an up-close picture of the lace on the bottom, I sewed this lace under the bottom apron (under the hem).  instead of on top like in the Christmas apron.

I also sewed on a flower I made out of fabric flower pieces (I used fabric so the apron can still be washable). The pieces are from the Making Memories Flower lines. (so are two of the ribbons infact!).

This is a side view of the apron.

The Christmas Apron is the simplest of the three. It's basically just the two dish towels sewn together, like the first apron I showed, with a the tie sewn on, and then I also added the star and button on top of the tree. The apron came with the embroidery on it, and I have seen a lot of fun things like that at Target too. Infact the snowflake towel came from Target in a two-pack and the towel that came with it had an embroidered bird on it. It would have been cute to use too! Both towels were only $3.99! so you would have a handmade apron for a little over $6.00 (including the trim).

Here is an up close picture of the felt start and button.

The red dishtowel came with rickrack sewn on the bottom of it,  I also sewed some lace on the bottom of the green snowflake apron as well!

This last apron is a little more complicated, but has pockets in it. It's really NOT that complicated, you simply fold "up" the bottom apron and sew straight seems (two of them) over the "fold" creating 3 pockets. I still added ribbon, but instead of sewing them to the "top" of the top apron, I sewed them to the underside, so when I folded the apron, "UP", the trims were on top.

You can see here how the pockets are formed. Simply fold UP the bottom of the top dishtowel. Keep in mind, if you are doing pocket, you will use MORE of the dishtowel, so really you will need almost the full dishtowel for the top of the apron, since you will fold it up anywhere from 4"-8".

You can see in this picture how basically once I folded the dishtowel UP, I then just sewed a straight stitch in up two parts of the dishtowel, creating "three" pockets. I only sewed as far as the dishtowel was folded.

Here are some up close pictures of another apron I made, using buttons as embellishments.

And that's it! Can't wait to see what you do! :)