Turning a Dress into a Waist Apron with Pockets

I bought a grey linen dress on ebay, but I didn’t quite like the top half of it. After sitting on it for a year, I decided to refashion it into a waist apron – with pockets.

Body

Snip! The dress was cut in half (well, ~53cm from the bottom).

The two side edges of the skirt were serged, folded about 1cm and sewn. Existing darts were kept – how convenient!

Pockets

The back side of the top of the dress (the front was plain grey) was cut up to make 2 rectangular pockets. The biggest two rectangles I could cut out was 16 x 21(+2cm fold for the top).

Interfacing fabric was ironed on along the top of the pocket, then folded over and sewn. The bottoms were folded over and sewn, but the sides were simply serged to keep the sewing simple as a beginner sewist.

These rectangles were sewn onto the front panel of the apron on either side – where both hands reach easily.

Ribbon

I decided to use herringbone tape as the apron’s ribbon to save me from sewing a ribbon. I also wanted to have the tape go along the entire top edge of the apron, rather than just sewn on at the ends.

The herringbone tape was cut so that 85cm hangs off each end of the apron, enough to easily tie a bow after wrapping it around the back to the front.

I used this tutorial as a guide to sewing the tape onto the apron.

The tip was to:

• Sew the tape along the top of the apron, so that it sits 3mm above and in front of the apron fabric; then
• Fold the tape back onto the apron and sew along the top edge again. This hides the apron’s raw edge between the stitches.

The ends of the ribbon were triple folded and sewn.

Complete!