Cooking Apron

This year Alannah is participating in an after school cooking program.  She loves baking with me but I was a bit nervous to let her loose with a kitchen knife and really cook,  I thought it would be interesting to see what they do and get someone else to teach her some knife skills.  Turns out the teacher to is also not so keen to go there with sharp knives yet, so mostly it has been baking.  But Alannah is loving it and we get a recipe book with all the recipes at the end, which she is very excited about.

You can't do a cooking class without an apron.  The last apron I sewed, was the first thing I sewed as a mum.  Xanthe was maybe two weeks old, my Mum was visiting to help out and I wanted to try out the machine I bought at 39 weeks pregnant (yea pregnant women do crazy things) and see how it worked.  Mum sewed a lot when we were kids and I needed some lessons, I had no idea how to even turn on or thread the machine!  When I look back I can't believe how hard and complicated I thought it all was. This apron has been well worn and is still used but is way to small for Alannah now.

So I decided this was my chance to try and design something myself.  As this was a learning/tinkering exercise for myself I made the apron reversible, which is extra good at protecting Alannah's clothes but also gave me the chance to design two aprons.

The cupcake side is pretty with gathered pockets and I appliqued her name across the top. The spotty side is more traditional with two large square pockets in one piece.  I made a long tie so she could tie it herself in the front.  The frill and curved shape was to give it a pretty feel, it is an apron for a little girl.

The fabric was all from my stash, and definitely not my favourite fabrics. Online purchases where the colours were not quite what I expected, but they worked well together for this apron and it was great to use them! 

I know there are heaps of apron patterns out there, but this is all my own, so if I get 5 comments on this post I am happy to write up a free tutorial.  Xanthe and Philippa would like their own special aprons too, so sometime soon I will be making more.....