Christmas Craftalong Tutorial ~ Pretty Pinny

This month's tutorial came along quite by accident, as indeed most of my makes do. I was scouring the shops for a union jack t-shirt or something prettily patriotic to wear for the jubilee celebrations. But as all the ladies reading this will know; The Ultimate Law of Shopping states that if you have a specific item in mind and enough money to buy it, you will not find it! In the end I gave up and decided to wear a lovely red Cath Kidston dress and make a pinny from a Union Jack tea towel to go with it. The lovely Georgina Giles has an awesome tutorial for making a full length tea towel apron here, but I needed a pinny for my purposes. And here's how I made it:

You will need:
a tea towel
approx 6' / 2m of 1" cotton tape (enough to go twice around your tummy) plus an extra 16" / 40cm

Start by pinning your pleats in place. Find the centre of the tea towel by folding in half and marking the spot with a pin, then work outwards from there. I left a gap in the centre to allow the red stripe to show through, then put in three large box pleats by folding approx 1" forwards, then 1" back.

here I've highlighted the folds I made:

Press them sharply into place. Now take your long piece of tape, find the centre, and pin to the tea towel so that half the width overhangs the top.

Stitch carefully in place. I say carefully, because the hem of the teatowel will be very close to your sewing machine foot and if you get a bit over-excited and go too fast (as I did) the hem may push you off course as you go over the thickness of the pleats.
Next, take your shorter piece of tape and pin in place on the reverse of the apron tie, so you cover the back of the pleats. Stitch carefully around all four edges. (these photos get worse don't they! Hopefully they help clarify what I'm talking about though)

Et voila!

This style would work beautifully with a chintzy floral tea towel. It also looks a whole lot better if you iron it before posing for a blog photo (d'oh!)