Project Sunday: Assembly Line Aprons

"Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs."

Henry Ford, often credited as being the

"father" of the assembly line production process

Yup, I've spent my last two Sundays working, assembly line style, on these aprons for the kitchen staff in Ani's restaurant.


There are a ton of cute apron patterns out there - the Emmeline is one of my favorites. I would have loved to have tried a vintage apron pattern, but Ani wanted a simple and professional style. So, we ended up with this one:

She also wanted all of the aprons to be bright orange - her favorite color.

I was able to talk her into finding fabric that included orange, but also included some of the favorite colors of her kitchen staff - you know, the folks who would be wearing the aprons! ;)

She picked light weight cotton prints for the front and so we decided to use a second layer of cotton (in a solid color) to give the aprons a little bit more body, and it was a short hop, skip & jump from there to decide to make them reversible. I knew that, if I was going to sew 2 large pieces of fabric together, I'd need to (a) pay attention to the grain of each fabric and (b) quilt them so that they laundered well.

The pattern didn't come with quilting lines, so I used long pieces of yarn to find an arrangement that I liked.

Here's a shot of both sides of the blue version:

For the quilting, I took advantage of this opportunity to use some beautiful variegated thread.

I'll try to get some pictures next weekend of the kitchen staff wearing the aprons. :)
I hope your weekend included some sewing time!