Hey! I'm Bob at I Like to Make Stuff. Today I'm going to make:
A shop apron
[Intro Music]
A couple of weeks ago, I made this Yo-Yo on the lathe
and after turning for quite a while, I found that my pockets were just full of sawdust
So I decided to make a shop apron, so I've something to wipe off my dirty hands and keep sawdust out of my pockets
Let me show you how I did it
Spoiler alert!
I'm pretty bad at sewing
But, here we go
For this project, I used a waxed cotton
It's pretty cool, cause when you crinkle it up, the wrinkles stay there because of the wax
I figured this would make it look broken in
and probably hide some of the dirt in the long run
I got two yards of this, but you can definitely get away with one yard because I had a lot left over
I used a rotary cutter to cut this on my cutting mat.
It's the best way to cut a long straight line very easily with material
I cut it down to the general size that I wanted
Based on some measurements that I found online
Then I folded it in half, and trimmed off the outside edges to make sure that they were pretty close to square
I was working in profile at this point, so I did half of the width of the section right below my chin
and then made a mark down where I thought the armpit would go
I connected those two with a couple of curves
and just tried to find one that I thought would look good
I used the rotary cutter to cut along that curve, which was also very easy to do
I did a test fit, and it actually worked pretty well
I just barely know what I'm doing when it comes to sewing
So, I started folding over the rough edges onto the backside
and putting in some straight pins to hold them in place
I used the sewing gauge to help try to get an even fold-over on all these so the seams were about the same sizes
I started by pinning up one side and sewing it
I figured if I had pins then all the sides they would start catching on each other
Then I just used the basic straight stitch on my wife's sewing machine to start going over these seams
I made several mistakes when doing this, and I actually went back with a seam ripper and re-did some of these
because they were just not straight
and they just looked bad
I also forgot, several times, to run it backwards at the end of the seams
to kind of double up on the thread
right at a corner
Eventually I got all of the different sides
and I had the basic shape in place
Then I wanted to make a pocket that went on the chest
and to figure out the size here, I just laid some things in place that I thought I would probably put in those pockets
and measured their length
I measured out another rectangle of material
adding a half and inch to each side, so that I could fold it over
and get the same final size that I wanted
I did this one by hand because I had a pretty good handle on folding them over evenly
Once I got all four sides folded over
again I added pins to just hold the pieces in place so that I could add seams
While doing this, I realized there was a bunch of different stitches on the sewing machine that I hadn't tried
So I switched it and tried one of them
I ended up not really liking it
I ran a single stitch across the top of the pocket,
because it wasn't going to be sewn to the apron
The other three sides were
I added a seam up both of the outside edges
And when I was doing the second one I accidentally bunched it up a little bit
and so the pocket wasn't laying flat
It only took a couple of minutes to use a seam ripper and rip out this thread
and do it flat
It was totally worth while because it looked a lot better in the end
The second time I was just more cautious to hold the pieces just flat together so that they didn't bunch up
I ran a seam across the bottom
and then ran two seams from top to bottom
to make small pencil pockets on the sides
To make the straps for the apron, I got some orange canvas webbing
This also cuts really well with a rotary cutter
I always use a lighter to melt the ends of this
so that it doesn't fray after you cut it
This works best on nylon webbing, but it actually worked on this canvas as well
I got these strap adjusters to act as the buckles
and just folded over the webbing through one side of it
I ran over two seams forward and backward to hold this all the way at the end of this piece of webbing
Only one of the two straps for the neck need to have a buckle
The other one just runs through the buckle
I pinned these on, and tried to keep them straight relative to the top
and then sewed them on just in the same way
Again, I doubled up the seams on these because the webbing is thick
and if the apron got yanked down at all, I wanted these to hold in place
I pinned the other one on the other side
and did the exact same thing
I really had no idea about the length of these straps, I just cut them extra long
I figured I could close up the loop
Put it on, and then cut it down to length
It turned out to be pretty close
Next I had to add two more straps in the exact same way around the waist
I knew the side with the buckle here was way to long
So I just wrapped it over longer and just added more seams
Big thanks to Graphics Stock for sponsoring this video
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Just create some awesome stuff, put it out there, share it with the hashtag 'creatortocreator'
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I was hoping to add an I Like to Make Stuff patch to this
But they didn't come in in time
If you want one, they'll be on my website soon
As you can tell, I don't have a great comfort level with the sewing machine yet
But I learned a lot making this thing
I got a much better feel of how to control the material as it's going through
and I learned a lot of lessons by doing things wrong
Case in point: I kept forgetting, over and over and over, to put the foot down
and when you do that, it just does not sew well
I did that enough times, and I had to undo those stitches
that I started to remember every single time to put the foot down
Making a mistake over and over like that is a really good way to reinforce something that you know you need to do
So even though the stitches on this are not perfectly straight
And they're really not that great to look at, they are functional and they do seem to work
and I think this thing is going to work out pretty well in the shop
It looks pretty nice right now, but pretty soon it will be covered in glue and paint and all sorts of other stuff
But that's what it's for!
I would rather it be covered than all of my clothes
And having my clothes clean is really not that big of a deal to me
The bigger thing was reaching into my pocket to get my phone
and getting a whole bunch of sawdust instead
That is something that I would like to avoid, if possible
Anyway, I hope you liked this one and I hope it challenged you to take a skill that you're not very good at
and practice it
I know that I am definitely going to keep practicing at sewing
But if you're a pro at sewing, I've got lots of other projects that you might be interested in
So be sure to check all those out
And don't forget to subscribe
That's it for this one guys, thanks for watching!
I'll see ya next time