Kids Sewing: Half-Apron

Every once in a while, the 8 yo gets into this phase where she can't do anything else until the art/craft/sewing project in her mind takes physical shape.

And, every once in a while, I get gung-ho about showing her a simple item to sew, whether it is in her radar or not. It helps if the item is for her friends or family - it acts as a powerful motivator, to be able to finish and give it away.

And that's how this half-apron came about.

Her friend's birthday was coming up - a friend who is herself a mini-seamstress. The trademark purses she makes for her friends' birthdays wouldn't work as she has already given a nice hand-made felt purse to this friend last year.

Half-apron seemed like a good idea.

I let her raid my fabric stash and choose some fabric. We decided to make it reversible, so, we had two different fabrics for the apron - polka dot on one side, plain white on the other.

Then, I measured her waist and the height for the apron. Since we needed gathers/pleats, we kept the full waist measurement. And then I got very generous with the measurements. And decided to make it large enough for a little girl and possibly her Mama.

Then had her cut the initial rectangle of  waist x height, out of both the fabrics. Plus cut out long strips for the waist-band-tie from both the fabrics.

With the fabric cut out and ready, and armed with a pincushion full of pins, I was ready to show her what to do.

Since this is not a sewing tutorial, let me skip the tedious details and get to the final part, which was to sew a hand-made tag that says, "Made by:__________ for_______".

Did she enjoy the process of making it? Yes.
Will she be able to do this again by herself? Probably.
Will the finish on the independent one be as smooth as this one which I oversaw zealously? Probably not.

The fun was to hear her friend, the recipient, say that she liked it, and that she was glad it was a half-apron as she had just sewn a full-apron for herself not too long ago.