Homemade Gifts ~ Aprons for Kids

Ready for picture overload and another tutorial today? Good! Here we go!

I love to make at least one homemade gift for my girls each year. First, I like to be crafty and creative, plus I like for them to see that all gifts don’t have to be costly {or electronic!} to be enjoyed.

While shopping on Black Friday I found these child sized aprons at AC Moore and knew they would be perfect. My girls LOVE to help with baking and I thought they might like having their own personalized, custom aprons to wear each time we bake. {I also decided to make one for my niece who is the same age as my daughter.}

Here’s what you’ll need:

* Child sized aprons {you could make your own, but these were pretty inexpensive so I figured I’d save myself one step and just buy the ones that were already made}

* Some fun cooking accessories – I got this bag of wooden spoons for just a buck!

 

* Fun colored sprinkles

* A cute cookie cutter for each child, I went with butterflies so they could be used year round.

* A few different spools of coordinating ribbon

* Felt in some fun colors/patterns {our AC Moore had lots of colors/patterns of these felt squares.}

OK, let’s get started. First use construction paper and cut out the letters you want to use to monogram. Figure out how large you want the letter to be and what font or whatever. I just kinda winged it and started cutting until I like the shape and size of the letters.

Flip the letter over and trace onto the BACK side of your felt fabric …

Then cut the felt letter out and flip back over to the right side.

Next, for an extra layer of felt {just for fun} pin your felt letter, right side down, onto another piece of felt in a coordinating color.

Then, using pinking shears, cut around the letter, leaving just a little extra on the edges so you will see BOTH felt colors when you’re done ….

It should look like this when you’re done …

Now you’re going to take your apron and figure out the basic layout of where you want things to be. Lay out your letter and your ribbons and play around with the placement until you have them just where you want them.

Leave some overlap on the ribbons, you’ll cut off the excess later, but for now just let it hang over the edges.

Now pin the letter and ribbons to the apron so that when you sew, they won’t shift and will stay just where you want them. After it is sewn on, it will look like the picture on the right …

Then sew along the ribbons too. I sewed right through the middle of each ribbon, except for the top one. Since it had words on it and I didn’t want to sew over the words, I carefully sewed a line above AND under the words. If you have really wide ribbon you might want to sew the top and bottom, but otherwise these thin ribbons only need one line of stitches.

Then flip the apron over and pin down the excess of the ribbons …

Then you will sew a line right up the edge to keep the end of the ribbons in place.

At this point you can cut off your excess.

OK, here’s what we have so far … but I thought I wanted just a little bit more flare soooo …

I used some of the excess felt, some pinking shears and some cute buttons, and I made these little rosette kinda things to attached to the top corner of the apron. Just cut 3 different fabrics into circles, I totally winged-it here and just started cutting the felt until I liked the way it looked. {have you noticed I do that a lot!?} I sewed the bottom one down to the apron with my machine, then just used a cute button to keep all 3 together.

And here are the 3 completed aprons!!!

 

Now, when you give these as a gift, simply attach the cute cookie cutter, a wooden spoon and a jar of sprinkles. It would also be cute to give with a jar of ‘Cookies in a Jar’ mix!! And don’t forget to give a recipe for Sugar Cookie Cutouts with it too!

Happy Crafting!