Dress Shirt Apron
By Lt. Sara Evans
In-Charge, Pocatello, ID Outpost
Materials
- Button up collared shirt
- Scissors
- Sewing method of your choice ( needle and thread or sewing machine)
- Optional : Iron
Step 1:
Choose an old long sleeve button up shirt that you would like to give new life to.
Step 2:
Cut off the sleeves. Cut close to the seam but do not cut it off with the sleeve.
Step 3:
A. Cut off the back of the shirt. Cut close to the seam but do not cut it off with the back of the shirt.
B. After both sides are cut, open the shirt and continue to remove the back of the shirt by cutting the back away from the collar. When cutting the shoulders there is no need to leave the seam. This part will be hemmed later.
You should now have something that looks like this
Step 4:
Turn your project button side down. Fold the shoulder corner over so that it makes a smooth (or close to smooth) line from the neck to the armpit edge of the shirt. Ironing a crease will be very helpful
Step 5:
Unfold your corner. Then fold it over again, this time making your fold about 1/2 in away from your original crease. Trim the excess corner at or just beyond the original crease.
You will be left with something looking like this
Step 6:
Fold your hem over your original crease so that almost no raw edge is showing. There will be a small amount of raw edge showing at the neck. Sew your seam.
Do this to both sides.
Step 7:
Take one of the sleeves you cut off earlier, cut along the seams. Remove the cuff and buttons. Cut the largest rectangle you can from the sleeve. It is preferable for the rectangle to be about 8 inches across. This measurement will vary depending on how wide you would like your ties.
Step 8:
Fold the rectangle in half, hotdog style, and cut. Fold each of those pieces in half, hotdog style, and DO NOT cut.
Sew along the long edge, leaving the short edges open.
If your rectangle measured 8 inches, each of your ties should be about 2 inches in width.
Step 9:
Turn your ties right side in. One way of doing this is to use a large safety pin. Secure the pin on one open end. Push the pin into the middle of the project. Carefully push the pin through the project until it comes out the other side.
Step 10:
Sew your ties to the side of the shirt where the sleeve once met the body. Be sure to sew this securely as it will be pulled on when the apron is worn.
Step 11:
Do not let your new apron collect dust on a shelf or a hook. Wear it, get it dirty, let it collect paint or glue from your next craft project. You took this shirt that may have otherwise gone to waste in a closet or maybe even in the trash and turned it into something new with a new purpose.
You were created with a purpose too.
Before meeting Christ, we are all driven by our flawed human nature. Our natural tendency toward self-preservation and self-satisfaction. We seek what is easy and what will bring us the most immediately satisfying results. We avoid anything we can, that is not. Unfortunately this leaves our happiness, our lives, in our own flawed hands. When we allow Him, God will do mighty things to in our hearts, in our minds, and in our lives. He will give us a new purpose. A purpose that is focused on Him. When we allow our lives to be transformed by God and accept the new purpose he has for us we can have comfort in the fact that our happiness and our lives are no longer in the hands of a flawed person but instead in the hands of the perfect and steadfast Creator.
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:1-10
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