tutorial - my plain pinny pattern

I've been asked if I had a pattern for a plain pinny - apron - and I do. I've finally managed to get it down on here! I hope it makes sense! :o)

Materials: use cotton fabric.
1 m/1 yd of 140cm/54" wide curtain fabric makes 2 pinnies.

Cut your fabric up the centre so you have 2 pieces of 1 metre/1 yard long by half the width of your fabric. Put one piece aside for now.

Cut off the selvage edge.

Cut 19cm/7½" from the length. Put this piece aside for the straps.

Fold your piece of fabric in half lengthwise and mark 15cm/6" out from the fold at the top edge. Then mark 25cm/10" down from the top side corner. Here's a rough drawing - not to scale - of what that means.

Cut away the piece as shown.

Keeping the waste pieces together, cut a 15cm/6" square from both layers for your pocket.

With right sides together, sew ¼" all the way around leaving a gap in one of the sides or the bottom edge for turning.

Turn your pocket and press. You don't need to sew the gap shut as you'll catch it in when you attach it to the pinny.

Measure down 12.5cm/5" from the top of the side edge and 12.5cm/5" in from the side.

Stitch the pocket to the pinny body keeping close to the pocket edge.

Overlock all around the pinny and sew down a ¼" hem. If you don't have an overlocker do a double ¼" hem - turn under ¼", press, turn under another ¼" and sew.

Straps: Cut your 19cm/7½" piece into 3 pieces along the length. So you'll have 3 pieces half the width of your original piece of fabric which are approx 6.3cm/2½" wide.

Cut one of them to 60cm/24" for the neck tie.

Neck tie:
Press under ¼" on both long edges. Matching the pressed edges, fold with wrong sides together and press again. Stitch close to both long edges.
Overlock short ends - or turn under ¼" - and attach the neck tie close to the sides at the top edge of the pinny.

Waist ties:
Press under ¼" on both long edges. Fold with wrong sides together and press again. Open out one short end and stitch down at an angle like this:

Trim seam - it should look something like this:

Turn and stitch down long edges, across angled end and back down other long edge. Overlock short ends - or turn under ¼" - and attach to the top of the straight sides of the pinny.

That's it. Your pinny will now look like this.

Now, if you can't be bothered messing about with the straps, you could just use some cotton tape instead. To be honest, this is what I usually do as it's much quicker. You'll need about 2m/2yds of cotton tape divided into the 60cm/24" for the neck tie and the approx 70cm/27" for the waist ties. Make sure you finish off the ends of the waist ties:

And here's the pinny I made with the second half of my piece of fabric using cotton tape for the ties. Just as pretty in my humble opinion - and made in less than half the time!

You might also like the following tutorials: flirty frilly pinny, flirty frilly half pinny, double oven gloves, single oven gloves and wee and round oven glove.

wee and round oven gloves - tutorial

Materials:
enough fabric to cut out 4 circles of 7" diameter. They don't have to be the same fabrics.
*EDIT* I now make these using 8" circles.
5 circles of insulated wadding/batting the same size - or more or less depending on how heatproof your wadding/batting is.
Bias binding - I used 1¼" wide but you can use whatever width you've got. (If you want to know how to make your own, here's my tutorial for how to do that.)
6" or ribbon or bias binding for a hanger.

To make the pattern:
Draw 2 x 7" diameter circles out of paper.

Put the circles of paper on top of each other with the top one overlapping the lower one by 3". I made one of the circles red so it would be clearer what I did. At least, I hope it's clearer!

Cut out the overlap so you end up with your second circle looking like the one on the right in this diagram.

We'll call the full circle piece A and the circle with the cut-out, piece B.

Cutting out:
Fabric:
Using A, cut out 2 of fabric. One will be all seen, the other will only be partially seen.
Using B, cut out 2 of fabric. One will be all seen the other won't be seen at all - a good chance to get rid of some of that "what-was-I-thinking?" fabric. :oD
Wadding/batting:
Cut out 4 of A and 1 of B.

To make:
Place one of your B fabrics on your table with the right side facing the table. Put your wadding on top of that and then the other piece on top with the RS facing up. You should have a B sandwich with the RS of the fabrics facing outwards on each side and the wadding in the middle.
Pin together and sew about 1/8" from the edge all the way round. (This photo only shows the top curve sewn. You do need to sew around the whole shape.)

This is just to hold the pieces together. You could tack/baste it instead.

Pin RS of bias binding on the cut out edge making sure you pin it to the fabric you want to be showing.

Stitch ¼" away from the raw edge. Stitch slowly easing your bias binding around the curve neatly.

Turn your B piece over so you've now got what will be the inside facing you. Turn under ¼" on raw edge of the bias and pin it down putting your pins in vertically.

You're going to sew this from the other side so you need to put your pins in vertically so you can take them out as you sew.

Turn over again and stitch in the ditch of the seam where you sewed the bias on. You can hardly see the stitching which is the point of stitching in the ditch.

This is how it will look on the other side - the side that will be on the inside of the glove. It's not so neat but it's on the inside so it doesn't matter too much.

Cut off any excess bias binding at the ends:

Next make an A sandwich with your A pieces of fabric both with RS out and the 4 pieces of wadding in between. Stitch as close as you can get to the edge. It's pretty hard - aka impossible - to sew an 1/8" seam with so many layers but try to get as close as you can.

I find it easier to use my walking foot for that seam but, if you don't have one, just go slowly.

Lay your B piece on top of your A piece and pin at the the ends of the bias on the B piece.

With RS together, pin bias binding all the way around the edge of your circle. I start at the top as that will sort of be hidden by the hanger.

Ease the bias binding to fit the curves:

Stitch approx ¼" away from the edge.

Trim some of the fabric/wadding away from the edges. This makes the next bit much easier. Don't trim too close to the seam.

Turn your bias to the back, turn under ¼" on the raw edge of the bias and pin it down.

I prefer to hand sew the bias down but, if you'd rather machine stitch it, go for it. I just like the way it looks with a hand-sewn bias.

Please note - if you do hand sew it down, use the same colour of thread as your binding not the same colour as your fabric. It looks much neater done this way.

To make a hanger, you can use ribbon or the same bias as you used already. If you're using bias, press under ¼" on the long sides with your iron.

Then fold those raw bits inside and stitch down the edge.

Turn under about ½" on the ends and attach the hanger at the top of your glove. I stagger the ends so that I'm not expecting my machine to stitch through too many layers of fabric. (There would be 8 layers of bias, 2 layers of fabric and 4 layers of wadding if you stitched them on top of each other. Yikes!)

Attach a label if using and that's you done.

This is a small glove - more appropriate to taking lids off pans or taking the peas out of the microwave. I personally wouldn't use them to take baking trays out of the oven. They're a bit too wee for that.

how to make bias binding

I was at my local fabric shop today looking for tartan material to make some bias binding. Did they have any? Of course not! Why would anyone expect a fabric shop in Scotland to sell tartan material?? They did have bias binding in tartan but there was no way I was paying £1.95 for 2 metres of 1½" wide tartan when I only paid something like £3.50 for a metre of 115cm wide (45" wide in old money).

So home I came and decided to try and remember how to make my own bias binding. I'd done this myself many, many years ago so it was really only a matter of trying to remember how to do it. I was so chuffed that I did remember. Go me!

So, to save myself having to figure it all out again some time in the future, I decided to take photos of what I did. Next time I decide I want to make my own bias, I can just come and look at these photos.

Cut fabric into a square - mine is 15" square but that's only because that was as big as I could get out of the fabric I had. I called the corners A, B, C and D. Come on, I was a Maths teacher so we always have to name our corners! :oD

Cut along the diagonal AC.

Put the DC and AB edges together.

Sew with a ¼" seam. Press the seam open.

Place your fabric on your table with the long edges at the left and right. Starting at the left edge, draw lines the width of the bias you want to make. I made mine 1¼" wide so my lines are drawn 1¼" apart.

Continue all along the width of your fabric.

Bring the 2 short edges together and, starting at the left side, pin the first line of the front edge to the second line of the back fabric. There has to be a lug at both ends to give you a continuous line later to cut along. Also, the lines need to match ¼" down from the edge - not right at the edge. I pushed my pin in the top fabric ¼" down from the edge and then matched the line on the back to that pin.

Here are the lugs - or overhang as I called it in the second photo.

Sew that seam and press it open.

Go to the lug/overhang at the left side and start cutting all the way along the line.

You end up with a long length of fabric cut on the bias.

If you have more than one strip to join, make sure you overlap them properly to join them together.

Sew together then cut off those lugs:

And here is my bias binding - nearly 8 metres of the stuff from 2 15" squares.

Not too shabby! :o)