Little Girl's Ruffly Apron

Present time! I have 4 birthdays I currently am creating gifts for. And another one in my head... So some of them had to be quick... and still adorable. This is a gift for a friend of my daughter that is turning 7 years old. I had a ruffly shirt in my box of clothes to re-purpose and had just the idea for it the other day. The before mentioned little girl loves to play restaurant and house so I thought I'd make this shirt into a cute dress up apron for her. It was super fast and easy. Here's how I did it.

Little Girl's Ruffly Apron


You will need a tie of some kind. I used ribbon. And you'll need a shirt or girls dress, preferably with ruffles on the bottom of it. You could turn under the edges and have straight seams or use pre-ruffled fabric or create your own ruffles if you want. For personalizing the front I used scrap fabric and applique.

1. Turn the apron.. oh.. ahem still shirt! And it's really wrinkly by the way. Sorry. Like I said I was doing this quickly. And as much as I would like to have it look nice and ironed and maybe on a professional looking background... It didn't happen. I was actually crafting whilst watching a show with my husband whist the children *did not* sleep and my desire to get out the iron before absolutely necessary was low. My beige carpet and wrinkles will have to do today. ;) So, turn the wrinkly shirt over. Cut off the ruffle all the way around and cut up the side seams.

2. Take the back of the shirt and cut a straight line across the top. Then cut matching curved lines at each side. Now use some of the fabric left over from the front of the shirt to make a duplicate of the top of the apron for a liner.

3. Pin the top of the apron and the liner for the top of the apron right sides together along the curved sides and the top. Leave the bottom alone... at least for now. Sew along the yellow lines you see below. You want to leave the top corners and areas at the bottom open for the ribbon to run through later.

4. Turn your shirt-in-transformation-to-an-apron right sides out now and sew along the yellow lines shown below. Notice that I left about an inch along the curved sides to run the ribbon through later. So make sure openings, spots highlighted in orange, don't get sewn. I left the bottom of the liner loose, it won't fray, at least not much, being knit but you could sew it to the front now if you wanted to finish it.

5. I placed the ruffle along the edge of the bottom of the apron and pinned and sewed. I just rolled back the ends of the ruffle and they stayed so well on their own I didn't finish them.

6. I ran the tie... which was a ribbon I had up through one side and then back down the other. This creates an adjustable loop at the top for the head and loose ends to tie in the back.

I appliqued the little girl's name, Julianne, and a flower on the front with some scrap fabric I had.

Done! My daughter is modeling it. She said it made her feel like twirling. :) It doesn't get much better than that!