Apron Sew Along Part 1

Here are the 2 aprons I am making for the sew along:

They each take one yard of main fabric. A half yard of contrast collar fabric. One yard of lining fabric (both of these are lined with a nice white cotton I found on sale at Hancock.) and 13 inches of lightweight interfacing. The apron on top could be reversible, but I would never want to turn it around because I love Cori's fabric, so I just made it lined.

It's late, so I am going to post the easiest parts first. I like to do them first too.
Making the apron strings is easy. I like about a 1 inch wide apron string. I prefer to tie mine in the back, so I only make them about 26 inches long. You will want to make yours longer if you like to tie them in the front. The apron pattern is written for long strings - about 40 inches each. Play with your measuring tape to see what length you want. For the 1 inch width, I cut my strings 3 inches wide.
I press the long edges in about half an inch.  I also press one end in about half an inch. Then I press the long folded edges together. I stitch this closed about 1/8th of an inch from the folded edges.

After pressing the apron strings I like to press my 10" bit of bias tape for the key hole in the neckline. Cutting on the bias means cutting at a 45 degree angle from the grain of the fabric. If you had a square of fabric that was cut on the fabric grain, that would mean cutting diagonally from one corner to another. A quilters ruler will have 45 degrees marked to make it easy to cut bias strips.

Making the edges off set, will help you later when you apply the bias tape. You have the narrower part on top and the wider one underneath. That way when you stitch from the top, you are sure to catch the under part too.

I am off to bed now. Tuesday nights are pretty hectic around here, so I will plan on posting how the collars come together on Wednesday.
I hope you will join me for this sew along. You will love your new apron. The pattern for both of these is in one PDF, you can pick if up at Craftsy or on Etsy.