Upgrading Cheap-o Workshop Apron

In general I have no habit to weare an apron in the shop, yet I had one I got used ocasionally. In general it's a cheap polyester piece of crap, but after watching Adam Savages One Day Build video where he'd made himself a custom shop apron, I've got inspired targeted my own for a major upgrade.

I haven't made a photo of me weraing the apron before the transformation but if I would, it'd clearly showed the main issue I had with it - it was just way too big (I'm a rather small guy).

So the first step was to reduce the size of the apron, and the plan was to strategically distribute the excess material in order to use it for producing the extra parts as straps and pockets.

So after some fitting session I've roughly determined the desired size, and marked down the cuts. And the cuts I did after. I reduced the width by cutting two strips from sides, and then I've cut a section from the bottom to reduce the lenght of the apron.

After that I've folded the edge on the main body of the apron sewed it down all around the piece.

The plan was to use the bottom cut-off piece of material to make the pockets, so I cut it in two roughly guestimating the, size and preparing one edge of the chest pocket by folding and sewing the material down.

After that I can position the piece on the apron and sew it down in place.

Notice that I haven't sew the separations a t this point. I wasn't quite decided on what I wanted to keep in there, so I postponded this part, and I'll return to it later in the tutorial.

For the waist pocket I've cut the piece into shape and prepared the edges.

After positioning the piece on the apron I sew down the top part and the separation in the middle. I did not use any precise measuremants when placing the pockets - I just was putting the apron on and trying the most comfort placing in situ.

Before sewing down the bottom of the pocket I've prepared two straps I made out of a strip of material I've saved after cutting the pocket piece. I will use them to make... loops.

And this is how loops are formed. The straps got sewn down along with the bottom part of the pocket.

Since the loops turned down to be a bit too flippity-plopity all around I fixed them with another strategicakky positioned seam. Now I can quad-wield some nasty scissors in case of some cutting emergency.

Anyway. Now I'm preparing the long strips of material for turning them into straps. I've cut the dodgy ends first.

Since these stripes weren't long enough, for the sake of them functioning functionally and being able to accomodate the clasp - I applied two straps I've salvaged from some handbag.

Now I could to fold the edges of the stripes onto itself and sew them down practically forming good durable straps for my apron.

Ignore the seam quality - I had some issues with my sewing machine at this particular part.

Having two straps on hand I went ahead and attached them to my apron.

Then I used scraps of material to reinforce two areas roughly waist-high at the edges of the apron.

I've cut openings wide enough to pull the straps through and reinforced it with a seam.

After fitting the apron I figured out the finite lenght of the straps and attached both parts of the clasp.

Now, to reduce the overall chaos in the universe and keep the straps more or less coherent on my back I had to make a special piece to hold them together. So I roughly marked the required position of the straps on the piece of paper and made a quick and dirty template for the required detail.

To make my "crossection holder" piece I decided to use some of this brown faux leather.

In orded to make the piece more substantial I'm gluing two pieces of material together.

Then I sew them together and trim the second piece to the first one. This way two pieces end up perfectly lined up.

After punching some holes and cutting some slits I reinforced the piece with some additional stitching and it was ready to serve the universe on my back.

So at this point my apron was practically finished and I only had to sew down the spacers onto the chest pocket.

I decided to make 4 partitions a bit wider, to fit some scissors and knifes and straight edges (all are invisible on the picture) while 3 narrower ones were ment for some pencils and pens andwhatever.

Soon After I discovered that the narrow partitions were a bit too deep and pens and pencils were risking to dive there and got lost beyond retrieve. To adress this issue I've added a strip of faux leather (with some loops involved) essentially reducing the depth of those pockets.

And... that was it. This apron turned out to be rather comfy I've got used to use it very quickly. It's convenient when I have a sudden and unstoppable urge to craft something but too lazy to change my nice clothings to shitty-dirty working ones. Also one can never have too much pockets... and I have few more now.

Anyway, hope it was helpfull, this is it for today, thank you for your attention, and something, something... something.