The One Hour Project: Dish Towel Apron

I think that sometimes I get caught up in these epic projects that take weeks upon weeks to finish... and every once in awhile it would be good medicine to just complete a project in an afternoon... (or evening, once my little one has fallen asleep).

The other day I picked up a couple of bright dish towels from the *secret goodwill* (a local goodwill that never fails to present treasures for me to buy... and the location of which I've been sworn to secrecy by my sister and fellow bargain hunter) that were just dying to be made into an apron. They are cotton and the perfect amount of worn down with faded blooms and soft patches...

So I put together this quick tutorial for you all to make your own dish towel apron if the inspiration hits. Now something that should be noted about this particular dish towel apron: I hate the tutorials that use one towel... it is absolutely not enough fabric for me to use in a pratical way.

I don't know about how you all cook... but I am constantly using the sides of my hips to dust flour from my hands or quickly dry them after a dunk in soapy water. Thus being said I made sure the towels were just that: plural. That way they would span not only the front of my waist but wrap nicely around the hips a bit.

Please also take note that while it's totally possibly to only use fabric from the towels themselves, I like my aprons to hit just at the knee, so I also used a fat quarter scrap from my stash for the waistband. Any scrap in this case will do and you'll see in the tutorial below that really you just need something that runs the length of the top (waist) of your apron. Okay, on to the tutorial!

Dish Towel Apron

1. Lay out your towels on a flat surface and cut two sides of the hem from each. They must be two sides that are next to each other because these raw edges will become your center front of the apron and your waistband.

*Please note* that my print is not directional. Meaning it doesn't matter if I cut it and then flip one of the pieces "upside down" when moving on to my next step of placing right sides together. IF your fabric is directional make sure you cut the top and left side of one towel, and the top and right side of the other towel.










2. Place right sides together, making sure the raw edges are on top of each other.

3. Stitch together one of the raw edges starting from the hem and moving up to the other raw edge. Starting from the hem is very important in case your two pieces don't finish at the same time. If this happens at the waist you can compensate when applying the waistband... if this happens at the bottom hem, you need to re-hem the apron. No thanks.

4. Take your seam you just sewed and press it open with a hot iron. Once the seam is pressed open, I went back over the seam placing a staystitch 1/4" from the original seam on both sides on the right side of the fabric.

You could also finish your seam by serging it or binding it with some pretty scrap fabric from your stash. I was looking for speed more then attention to detail, but I've bound my apron seams before and liked the outcome.

5. Next we are going to slightly gather the top of the apron. I started by sewing a basting stitch line (basically the biggest stitches your machine will make) along the top of the apron. I then pulled on one of the threads while gently gathering the fabric along the top until it was the desired width for me. Once you have this figured out tie a knot with the thread so it will hold your gathers while you work on other parts of your apron.

6. Now grab your pieces that you cut from the towels in step one. There should be four of them. We are going to sew two of them together, creating two nice long ties for your apron.

Start by making the shape of an "L" with the two ties and place the foot on your sewing machine down so that you sew diagonally across the square the "L" will create.

Next open up the seam and press, and sew along the outside of the square in order to anchor down your seam allowance "flaps". Do this to the second set of cut hems and set both ties aside.


7. Now it's time to create your waistband. I literally grabbed a fat quarter piece from my stash (though anything with the correct length will do), measured along the top of my apron, added an inch (for seam allowance) and decided how high I wanted it to be (2" finished, which is then doubled and an inch of seam allowance is added to this as well, bringing the rectangle of fabric I cut out 21" by 5".) Because this is being sewn like a binding, you could cut your waistband on the bias, however I didn't.

8. Apply this to the body of the apron like you would a binding. Burdastyle has a wonderful tutorial on how to do this if your not quite sure.

9. To finish the edges of the waistband I poked them in on themselves, tucked in an apron tie on both ends and stitched down both sides of the waistband and ran a topstitch along the top of the waistband.


This was just a super fun, super easy project that left me feeling very accomplished for the day in regards to sewing. (And you know you are all super jealous of my "prime" in-front-of-the-garage-doors picture taking spot...)

If you decide to go forward with making one feel free to snap a photo and send it with a link to your blog if you have one. I love to see what other people are working on and the little things they add to a project to truly make it their own.

Enjoy and happy sewing!
Love,
Cut