welcome to today in my sewing room hey you want to make an apron we're going to use a pattern we're going to go to the fabric store get the fabric get the notions do it all from start to finish it's also a good way to show you how to go through a pattern and follow it step by step now before we get started I have to tell you that an apron is the very first thing I ever made in my life in fact it was this apron my mom taught me to sew when I was about nine years old and this was my very first project it is terribly made it's awful but you know what who cares because it taught a nine-year-old how to sew straight line stitching you can tell it's kind of all torn up and man this is seriously vintage I'm thinking like 1968 69 70 something like that my mom has made aprons for me and for my daughters in fact she made us all these kind of these barbecue aprons which are kind of nice for when I'm in the kitchen she used to come over and cook with me and we would cook for you know enough food for like two or three months and put in the freezer the apron that we're going to make today looks like this now I chose a pattern that I've used for a long time it's one of my favorite in order to make this apron first thing you're going to need is fabric obviously now I would suggest that you go to the fabric store even though you can make this out of anything you would really benefit by going to the fabric store and getting your pattern and also your fabric it's important that you get the kind of fabric that the pattern recommends now in this case they're talking about stable woven cotton and cotton blends like a cotton polyester now you can find these in the quilting section of the fabric store so you want to choose your fabric and when you go up to the cutting table you're going to need to get fabric and interfacing and you're facing is usually found right around where the cutting table is it's either at a rack on the end of the cutting table or its back where you can't reach it and you just need to tell your cutting person that you need some interfacing now before you leave the fabric store make sure that at home you have the basic sewing essentials you need things like these okay so now I'm home I've got my fabric I've got my interfacing the very first thing I need to do with very crisp beautiful fabric is throw it in the washer now the reason you do this is because your fabric is very often a cotton or a cotton blend and your thread is a cotton covered polyester or it's just polyester which means that cotton may shrink if you throw it in the washer if you sewn that with polyester thread what's going to happen is your threads not going to shrink but your fabric will so it will pucker on this it's also a good idea to wash it because it's going to get out a lot of the chemicals and the sizing that the manufacturers have put into it in order to sell it yay our fabrics out of the dryer now and it might be a little wrinkly if it is you can either iron it which I try and avoid because I hate doing that kind of thing I never iron sheets I think people that iron sheets are out of their minds sorry if you are one of those pizza people but really I just think you're crazy so we're going to unfold it and then we've got the two long edges that are finished I'm going to bring those together so it looks like it did when it came off the bulb you've got a fold on one side and you have finished edges on the other so lay this down on your flat surface whether it's your table or a dining room table works really well or a kitchen table or the floor if you're going to lay it down on the floor it's better if you don't lay it down on the carpet you may not have any choice but pins tend to stick in the carpet so it's usually easier if you don't so lay out your fabric get it all smooth and let's look at that pattern very first thing that you're going to pull out is your instruction sheet instruction sheet is just basically the directions for how to make what you're going to make it's a big sheet of paper like this sometimes it's two or three sheets of paper it's got a lot of good information on it plus the instruction it's a step-by-step process of how you're going to make your thing in this case an apron first thing you see is a picture of the project right under that we have listed the pattern pieces they are all numbered each pattern piece corresponds to a list of the numbers and a description of what they are and you see two columns here that's because every instruction sheet is always printed in at least English and one other language in my experience is usually been French but sometimes it's Spanish and French or if you live in a different country it's going to be in your language and probably English the next thing you see is on this particular pattern it's body measurements okay moving on along the pattern you see fabric cutting layouts we're going to go to apron B which looks like that it gives you the pieces that you will need it also gives you the width of the fabric that you're using and it gives you a picture of what your pattern pieces should look like when you lay them out on your fabric after that are some basic sewing instructions and then we start in to the step-by-step part now the very first thing that this is going to give me is the directions for apron a but I don't want to make apron a so I'm going to go through until I come to apron B now read this read this all the way through read everything on it read it all familiarize yourself with the pattern I do this with everything that I make in fact what I do is I kind of mentally go through and I make it in my head before I make it actually and that way I will avoid a lot of the mistakes that I might otherwise make so read your pattern instruction sheet get familiar with it ask questions of people who do so or you can leave me comments down below and ask questions and I'll try and answer those okay let's go back to the pattern envelope again we've got still some stuff stuck in there and that's your pattern tissue which has all of your pieces printed on it now it's going to be two or three sheets of kind of a brown tissue and you unfold them and they've got all the pieces printed on them when you go to your pattern tissue go to the very outside line just don't cut on the lines cut around your pieces so I've gone ahead and cut my pieces out because I've used this pattern so often they are piece number four which is the tie and the flounce is piece number six p7 is the pocket piece eight is the actual apron itself but it only looks like half an apron because we're going to lay one edge on the fold when we go to cut it out and then piece nine is actually the waist so let's go ahead and lay these out and pin them down and cut them out okay got my pieces got my pattern instruction sheet now this is really important to have handy because you're going to need to look at the picture on here as to how to lay out your pattern pieces so I'm just going to go ahead and go from my picture and I'm going to lay my pieces out now one more important thing you want to do before you go and pin your pieces down lay them out just like you see on picture and but don't pin them down because if things aren't going to fit exactly the way they do in the picture then you're going to need to make some adjustments now in my case right now I can see that the pocket piece is supposed to go over here between my flounce and my apron piece and this isn't going to fit here now I've got all this fabric over here that I can easily use for my pocket so that's what I'm going to do I'm going to come over here and lay it here now this is okay to deviate from here as long as you follow the grain line of your pattern piece now grain line is the arrow and you want to make sure that it's going with the lengthwise of your fabric now in this case I've got two pieces that need to lay on the fold one is my flounce one is my apron and they are colored in such a way on my picture I have to lay them upside down so I went ahead and did that now that I know everything's going to fit I can pin it all down and then I can cut it up you know that all the adage measure twice cut once it's really really good good advice you always want to look at what you've done when you've pinned it down just double-check that you've done it right and that your layout matches what your picture does and if it doesn't match exactly remember why you laid it out the way you did now on my pocket piece it says that I'm only supposed to cut one it says that right here on the actual pattern piece now I'm going to cut two and you should also because I'm going to show you a different way than what the pattern says as to how to attach this it's much easier simpler way now something else that you want to make sure of is that when I go to cut I want to absolutely follow the line that is for the size that I need okay I got my pieces all cut out now it's time to mark one thing I did want to tell you is that when I cut things out and I run across a notch some people just clip right into the seam line I don't trust that I'm going to go beyond the seam line so since I have been sewing I go out around the knotch and that's just my preference if you want to make a little snip into the seam line um just be careful because you don't want to snip too far okay to mark on your pattern pieces are going to be various places where there are circles or lines and if you've read your instruction sheet thoroughly then you'll know that you're going to have to match some dots together or you're going to have to fold on a line in this case on my ties I have a fold line now I'm not really going to mark this fold line and here is why because you see where this fold line is now it says fold line I can tell that all I'm going to do is fold this in half right on that fold line well if I'm just going to match up the edges I really don't need to know where that fold line is do I so there is a dot here a big circle and then a small circle so I'm going to mark those when you've been so in a while you don't have to mark those simply because you kind of know what's going to happen these are places that you need to match up to other pattern pieces so I'm going to go ahead and mark these