Aprons

Last Spring, Malcolm had been asking that I go to school with him so that he could show me some of his favorite things to do.  I put it off until nearly the end of the year so that grandma and grandpa could watch Dorothy at home rather than bring her to school.  The school doesn't mind if I bring her, but she wants to get into everything and the kindergarten girls all want to play mommy to her.  At best, taking her is a distraction and a nuisance.  Anyway, while I was at school with Malcolm, he wanted to paint and the apron they had for the kids to use was "well loved" at best and he couldn't work it by himself. I sent an email to the head teacher in his class and offered to make some new aprons for the kids to use the next year and she enthusiastically took me up on the offer.

These would probably not have been my first choice of fabric if I had gone to the store to buy fabric to make aprons for a preschool and kindergarten class, but my goal was to use up some of my stash and not spend any money. I made three aprons, spent zero money, and they turned out really cute. When I gave them to his teacher today, I thought she was going to cry she was so happy.

Here is the pattern I used. It is the same one I blogged about back in March. These were very quick to put together once I found the fabric I was going to use. I didn't have quite enough of a couple of pieces I pulled out of my stash and I had to dig a little to find enough. I made one tiny change to the pattern and made the aprons a little bit longer than in the original. The first time I made one, I thought it looked a little short on my four year old who is average height. Also, instead of having a velcro closure on all three, I did one velcro, one button, and one snap. I asked the teacher which she would prefer and she liked the idea of one of each so the kids could practice their snapping and buttoning.

I appologize for the photos.  I would have preferred to take them outside in better lighting, but it is raining here, and I wanted to get them to the teacher when I picked up Malcolm from camp.  I finished the last one this morning while Dorothy played.  I don't let her in my sewing room because there are too many dangerous things for her to get into (pins, scissors, hot irons, etc.), but I got out our box of musical instruments and she happily banged away for a long time.  I chose the music box so I could keep an ear on what she was doing and could investigate when it got quiet.

All three hanging and ready to go.  I love the elastic neckbands; such a good idea.

I tried to get Dorothy to model one for me, but she was mad at me and wouldn't face me because she liked the kitty apron better than the one I put on her.

Plaid apron.  I cheated a little bit on this one to make my goal of not spending any money.  I used a brown thread that was close, but not quite the rust orange color of the fabric.  I also pieced together two pieces of elastic to get the length I needed.  You can't see it very well, but there is a snap closure on the left, just below the curve.

Kitty apron.  This was Dorothy's favorite, and I think maybe the teacher's favorite too.  I used the biggest button I had (on the left) to make it easy on the little fingers.

The colors look a little washed out in this photo, but it is bright and vibrant in real life.  It has a velcro closure.  I wasn't sure I would like this one, and I think it ended up being my favorite.