Feature Friday: Vanilla Bean Girls

Happy Friday, everyone!

I'm always so inspired by all the amazing blogs out there, so I wanted to take time to feature them and their talents!

I'm so excited to have Ellie from Vanilla Bean Girls here today for my first ever guest post! She is so fun & creative - I'm always looking forward to her posts! After you're done here, head on over to her blog and see what she's got going on!

Take it away, Ellie!

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Hey there everyone! I'm Ellie from Vanilla Bean Girls!

I'm so glad to be visiting you all here at Atsy Fartsy Mama! Lindsay has linked up some great projects at VB's SHOW OFF SUNDAY Link Party, and I've loved seeing all of her great sewing projects! I thought I'd share a quick project I whipped up the other day for my girls!

I'll apologize ahead of time because I'm a total novice seamstress! I made each apron to fit each girl, so it didn't even occur to me to take measurements for y'all until I was through! Sorry 'bout that!

First up was lil' Boo Boo's apron. She picked a rainbow fat quarter, of course! She's completely in love with pink and rainbows lately. I had an extra pink cavas textured curtain panal left over from a different project, so we thought we'd use that for the bottom half since it was already hemmed beautifully and saved me time!

We cut the edges to fit her width and then hemmed them in.
Fold in twice and iron so that the raw edge is hidden!

We used the rainbow fat quarter for the top half. Fold it in half and iron. Then we trimmed it to the right size width as well. Fold it with WRONG sides together, yes, I know, it's backwards of what we always do. . . . but keep it wrong sides together and sew 1/4" seam all around.

Fold over the top of your bottom apron half 1/4' down and iron. Pin the top half of the apron to it, RIGHT sides together this time. (Make sure that the CUT side of the fat quarter gets pinned to the bottom part of the apron, and the FOLDED side of the fat quarter is the part that will end up being the very top of the apron.) Sew along the pinned bottom.

For your edging, choose a fabric you have a long width of. Lil' Boo Boo just couldn't take her eyes off another fat quarter, so I had to do my best to make it work! I cut it diagonal and then took four inches from each side of the half to make biased tape.

For those of you new to biased tape, you fold it in half, iron, and then open it up to fold each side in to the middle and then iron it again.

Once you have the sides ironed in, you fold the whole thing in half and then iron it again.

Cut off the ends so you have a nice straight line.

Open up the end, fold it over, and then fold it back in half again and sew ONLY one of the ends shut.

Leave the rest open so you can use it as a border for your apron top.

Pin the biased tape onto the top of your apron. Your apron top should go inside the biased tape, and when you sew along the biased tape to close it, sew with your needle all the way to the inside so it'll attach to the apron as well.

When you get to the top of your apron, just keep on going so that it'll close the entire strap. Do it for both sides, and these will be the two straps that tie around your neck. Pick a coordinating fabric with lots of length as well, and make another long line of biased tape, but try to make it a little fatter, so start with 5-6 inches of fabric. This will be the strap that you use to tie around your waist.

When you have your waist strap done, (I sewed on both sides of the strap just for looks) You'll pin it on top of your top and bottom pieces which are already connected. I pinned it in such a way that when I was going to attach it, I could sew right on top of the hem line I already had for the waist strap.

You should end up with something like this:

For Freckle's apron, she wanted more of a patchwork/quilted look. She picked a few different fabrics, but they were just thin cotton, so they needed to have a muslin backing. I sewed three strips together and ironed open the seams.

Then I put it RIGHT sides together with muslin and cut the muslin to fit, pinned it together and sewed three sides together, just like you'd do for a pillow. Leave the top open.

Turn it right side out and iron the edges. Next, you'll sew the three edges again, and down both sides of each seam for the front pieces. Back should look like this:

Front should look like this:

Do the same sort of thing for the top like I did with the first apron. (Folded fat quarter for the top and biased tape edging.) However, Freckle didn't like that the other one tied around the neck, so she wanted a simple loop to put around her neck. When you sew the top biased tape, just keep it going all the way around. I sewed both edges just for looks on this one too.

Then you'll connect the bottom and the top with your long waist strap.

Here's a picture of what it will look like from the back side.

After we were all done, they decided they wanted pockets so we had to throw some together. If you want more sturdy pockets, this is how I do it. Fold a piece of fabric in half (WRONG sides together) and iron flat. Fold over the three open sides 1/4" and iron flat.