March 2010's recently completed sewing projects.

Click on the photos for larger views of them.

1. Made up 2 of these table runners. Gave both of them to Marie. They match her chair pads, table mats, and her kitchen curtains.  

2. Made 2 of these wristlet purses. Gave one to Marie. She was planning on putting her "Crumb Catcher" in the mini purse inside her larger everyday purse. The grape fabric was an eBay.com purchase. My YKK zippers also came from eBay. I buy them in bulk batches. Same with they keychain rings, which were another bulk eBay purchase.

3. Made 2 of these Traveling Kleenex covers. Gave one to Marie.

4. Made up 4 of these brown table runners. Center fabric from Walmart's. Edging fabric from eBay.com.

5. Made up 4 of the Santa cat table runners.

6. Made up 4 of these plain cat table runners.

This is the reverse side of the cat table runners. The front Cat fabrics from Walmart's. The back cat & fish fabric from JoAnn's on the internet.

7. Made up 2 of these Craft Aprons, Style "A." 

8. Made up two of these Craft aprons, Style "B."

The difference between Styles A & B? 

Style B (top photo) has two strips of fabric going across it for pockets.

Style A (bottom photo) only has one strip of fabric going across it for pockets.

Style B has 4 pen pockets.

Style A has only 2 pen pockets.

Both are about 12" long. Used the same fabric on both of their waist bands. Each of the waist bands were made out of 3 strips of fabric. Check fabric widths and lengths below for all.  The smiley fabric has been setting in my fabric stash for years. Believe I bought it from Walmart's because that's where most of my fabric came from before going on line and finding all of the other places on line that sell fabric.  The black and white fabrics also were in my fabric stash. The red fabric  came from Fabric.com on the internet. Waistband fabric from Walmart's.

 

You can see where the waistband strips were joined together on each side of the apron in this photo because I used the white thread on the black fabric as a decoration.  You can also see the wood grain pattern on the black fabric in this photo, too.

The pen pockets on on both aprons are about one inch wide and will hold both a pen and a pencil in each of the slots. This is shown in the above photo.  The pocket below is holding 4" X 6" Post-It Matt photo paper. That's the print, peel and stick  kind that comes in a pack of 25 of them.  

I loaded the pockets up to the gills. Besides the 4 pen pockets, craft apron Style B has 9 other pockets. That's 5 of them across the bottom row with 4 of them in the row up above. Style A only has the 4 pockets with the 2 pen pockets on it. Yes, that's a Fabric.com yellow coupon in the top end pocket. That's where some of my fabrics come from, such as the red swirled fabric used on this apron.

Another feature that Style B has are two pockets that have Velcro on them for closurers on the bottom row.  I bent the fabric down so you can see both the front and the back sections of the 2" strips of Velcro.

Making up these 2 Aprons you will need:

A= Waist band - 3 strips of fabric 5" long X 20" wide (regular), 22 " (XL), 24" (XXL) -  folded in half lengthwise for each apron.

30" (regular) 32" (XL)  or 34" (XXL) wide fabric strips in the following sizes in length:

(all the same width)

B & F= Body - 24" folded in half lengthwise.

C= Top Pocket - 16" long folded in half lengthwise.

D & E= Bottom Pockets - 12" long folded in half lengthwise.

After assembling the lower body parts before joining to the waist band, pleat the lower body part to about 18, 20, 22 inches. I space the 1/4 inch pleats about 2 inches from each other, with using 4 of them on each side, thus a total of 8 mini pleats on the apron.  You will need about an inch on each side for joining the 2 apron back tabs to the main center tab and for sewing up the tie ends.  

RECAP:

I'll do up tutorials with photos the next time I make these aprons up.  The flat Waitresses Aprons are similar. They use fabric strips about half of the width of the strips that these Craft Aprons use for the lower body and the pockets without the pleats.

BROTHER SE350 USED

Used my Brother SE350 Sewing/Embroidery machine for making all of these up. Had no problem with sewing through the 6 to 12 layers of the cotton with the machine when making up the apron with the two rows of pockets on it. The 12 layers of fabric came into play when doing the edging on the apron. I used the foot that was on the machine when I bought it and didn't need a walking foot to do same. I also cheat and leave the same foot on when sewing in zippers. I just change the needle position to do same. Just love the machine's feature for self-threading the needle. It also has the capability of cutting the threads too. This machine seems to do just about everything you want and need a machine to do.  The more I use it, the more I seem to be falling in love with it and really completely satisfied with this purchase.....  Would probably be a breeze for doing up the Lazy Girl Design Wonder Wallets on it because that pattern calls for multiple thicknesses of fabric, and, after doing same with making up Apron B, this machine should be capable of handling the LGD WW's too.