Hi, Iím Jenny, from the Missouri Star Quilt Company, and we have a fun project for you
to make, out of a Tea Towel. We have this little Tea Towel here, and we are going to
turn it into this darling apron right here. So, lets go over to the cutting table, and
Iíll show you how to do this. OK, the first thing we need to do with making
our Tea Towel apron is to pick a Tea Towel. There are all kinds of choices available to
us there are even these darling vintage ones with the stripes on either side. Some of them
are even multi striped. Arenít those cute? Make a really cute apron.
So, for this demonstration we are going to use the yellow Tea Towel, because it will
be bright, and sunny, cheery. Good for your kitchen. Now the first thing youíre going
to do is take it over to your ironing board and iron it directly in half lengthwise, so,
you have a nice, crisp, ironed seam right here. Then youíre going to open that up and
youíre going to make sure that your tag is up here at the top. Now from the center front,
we are going to measure out 4î on either side, and mark it with a pin. So, weíve got
our 4î line there, and weíve got our 4î line here. Now you take it from the side,
and youíre going to go down 10î on the side, and put a mark
on both sides. There we go, now weíre going to take this corner right here, and this is
the corner that weíre going to press over, and this will give our apron that apron shape
that we want. So, what we want to do is we want to press
this with the iron, and make a good, crisp, crease on that. All right, letís go to the
ironing board. OK, so now we have a nice crease on here, and do both sides to your marks.
There we go, and then we go back over here. Now for this weíre going to want to take
the pins out, because we have our nice crease pressed in. Weíll open this up and you can
see that crease right there. What weíre going to do is we are going to lay the ruler so
that it overlaps that crease about 1î, maybe 1 ºî, and weíre going to cut that part
off. All right, so here we go with that. All right, so we have this little corner that
weíve removed, and you can see there we still have a nice crease there. What weíre going
to do is weíre going to iron this under ºî just like this, and then this will be folded
over and we will top stitch that. That makes the casing for our ties to go through.
So letís go ahead and weíre going to cut the other side and then weíre going to iron
this edge down, so, that we can stitch it. This other side, those rotary cutters will
go through anything. All right, here we go over to the ironing board. All right now,
very carefully, you just lay that edge over. Just eyeball it ºî so that you can, fold
that over so you have no raw edges, then weíre going to fold that over and that gives us
a nice little casing. If you have trouble folding that ºî under you can make this
cut a little deeper, go ahead and do it on this side. Also, be careful because youíre
working with the bias on here, and so that can stretch a little bit. I do know that if
you use the spray starch on it, it helps eliminate that stretch on that edge.
OK, so weíve got that down. Now lets head over and sew down this edge to make our casing.
OK, so weíre sewing along here just catching that edge. Itís all turned under, no raw
edges, and we are making a casing for our strap. You want to remember to backstitch,
because this is an end that you donít want to pull out. Weíll go right over here to
the other side. Remember this is ironed under, and weíre turning it over, and weíll start
right here at the edge, and weíre going to backstitch, and then weíll come forward.
You just donít want those ends to pull loose. Weíre stitching right along the edge of that.
There we go, and weíll backstitch again. OK! Now hereís our finished line.
Nice and smooth, now letís go back over to the cutting table. OK, now weíre going to
cut our straps. Actually, this is part of the fun part, because you get to choose a
fun fabric thatíll coordinate with your towel. This is fun because you just never know what,
you can put all kinds of things on here, and itís just going to make it really cute. I
think youíll really enjoy this. So, weíre going to cut some 3î strips, the width of
the fabric for our straps. Otherwise, you could use a fat quarter for the pocket if
you used some straps like a twill tape or something like that, but if youíre going
to cut your straps out of your fabric you need to have a width of the fabric, and three
makes a nice long tie. If youíre really little you only need to have two straps, but Iím
a three strap girl myself. So, weíre going to go over here and weíre
going to cut a piece thatís 8î x 16î. So, thatís the width of a fat quarter. Two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight, and this is going to make your pocket. Weíll cut it here,
weíre going to cut it at the fold
and this is going to make us a pocket thatís the width of the towel. Itís probably a little
bit longer. Iím going to trim down those, trim those salvage edges off. See how long
this is. Just trim that in a little bit like that, and then we need to measure the bottom
of our towel to make sure that itís not to wide for that, because weíre going to make
a pocket go across, see thatís a little bit wide. So, weíre going to cut it in just a
little bit. I think it should measure, let me check this out, but I think it should measure
about 16î. Actually this measures 20î so if your pocket is 16î that would be a good
measurement. Yeah, see thatís going to be good.
Now what weíre going to do is weíre going to sew ºî all the way around the outside
of this and leave a little opening so that we can turn it, because thatís going to make
our pocket for this apron. So, now Iím going to go over to the sewing machine, and weíll
do that! Make sure your fabrics are right sides together, and then youíre just going
to sew ºî all the way around, and then when you get down here onto the bottom part of
your pocket, just stop and move forward about 4î. Make sure your fabrics stay lined up,
and start again. That leaves you a place for turning. There we go. Iím just going to finish
all the way across the top. Now before we turn I like to clip my corners to make less
bulk. So Iím just going to clip these corners off like this, and then Iím going to clip
these two strings that are in between my pocket, or my opening I mean. Then weíll just flip
it around, poke it out as best as you can with your fingers. We have some great little
tools here called, The Purple Thang, that we use a lot for that. Iím going to use my
scissor right this moment. Not generally advisable, but if youíre really careful you can do it.
There we go, see how sharp those corners look. You can also pull them out with a pin if youíre
really careful. You just donít want to snag your fabric.
All right, now weíre going to go over to the ironing board, and weíre going to press
this flat, and weíre going to fold up this little seam right here, and press that down
so that when we top stitch it, weíll just top stitch that right to the thing, and we
wonít have to do any hand work on that. So, letís go over and iron this. OK, so now we
want to fold this up. Make sure this seam stays pretty straight in there, and weíre
going to iron that down. Iron the top piece over it. Then itíll just lay on there so
nice and you wonít know that thereís a little hole in there. OK, now the next thing we need
to do is top stitch a couple of rows across the top. This is mostly just for looks, and
weíre going to do that before we attach this to the apron.