This past week I was eager to use my die-cutter machine to make something. This did sidetrack me from working more on my swimsuit but It was just a fun quick side project. Lately, an email ad from Redbubble reminded me of the aprons I was looking at. Of course it was Demon Slayer related, how could it not be? But I did not feel like purchasing one when I could make one. The Cricut kit I purchased came with 4 sheets of glitter iron-on vinyl sheets. (Also known as Heat Transfer Vinyl or HTV.) That's when things started.
I liked the heart pocketed and slightly French maid looking apron. Went ahead and purchased a yard and a half of Poly Cotton Broadcloth in white and black.
I did eventually do some testing with scrap vinyl and fabric. Thankfully, that worked so I knew I could follow the instructions on the Cricut website and get a good result.
Gathered fabric for trim is generally a challenge for me. I knew of a couple ways I could do it.
Pattern Hunt
First, I wanted to find a pattern for the apron. I knew I wanted something with good real estate for placing iron on images and something with a pocket or pockets. Lately, vintage recreation patterns have been my jam and after a lengthy search, I ended up finding a pattern I liked.
Simplicity S9311. I picked the Yellow Apron. |
Vinyl Research
Since I only had 4 sheets of HTV on hand, I knew I couldn't mess things up so I was very thorough in my research on how to apply Glitter HTV. The Cricut kit came with some PDF books that walk through different products. I also read the official site's step-by-step instructions.
Iron on things are finicky at best. I remember ages ago trying to iron on a stretchy t-shirt and the image just peeled off. So, this time I made sure that the fabric for the apron was the appropriate kind. I also pre-washed the fabric (which I pretty much NEVER do usually).
For washing out chemicals. |
Apron Design Ideas
My original idea was to make two aprons that featured this chibi Kyojuro Rengoku stencil by Longquang. I had already cut out two iron on samples in red and in silver. However, I didn't have a design for the apron yet, nor did I have the pattern dimensions. So unfortunately, both of the HTV transfers were the wrong dimensions for this project. (It did give me a LOT of practice weeding the image.) As I was looking at my leftover HTV colors and rethinking my design, I thought that since I was getting both white and black fabric, I could make one apron look like a Demon Slayer uniform. I could cut the buttons from gold, the bars and Kanji in silver, and trim everything with white ribbon. I could even make the waistband white to really be reminiscent of the uniform. So I decided that the black apron would be that and the white apron would be my Rengoku apron. However, in addition to the chibi stencil, I was going to add a depiction of the flame hilt to the heart pocket.
Project Challenges
There are three major points of challenge for this project.
- Sewing gathered material to the fabric
- Cutting out Images correctly
- The Iron-on Process
I could follow the sewing instructions and just gather certain lengths of lace trim then add it to the apron pieces, but I never know how much to gather things. I could also use my serger to create a ruffle in the lace. But my old sewing machine had a ruffler foot and I wanted something similar for my current machine. So I got a gather foot which lets you gather and attach to flat fabric in one stitch.
The other two challenges I did a lot of research for before attempting. I was really nervous because I'd only get one shot with these HTV sheets.
My next Post will be about how I prepped the images for die-cutting. Then I'll get into the iron on process, and finally the sewing part.
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