Here is the backstory on how the recycled jeans and felt apron came to be. Zoe took her old jean with holes out of the trash, looked at me and said, “How could you?” I gathered up different fabrics and felt and brainstormed. I decided to make an apron for Zoe using those jeans she saved from a grave of food slop and garbage. This is what we ended up with, a Recycled Jeans and Felt Apron with the Dresden Template!
What You Will Need!
Let’s Make a Recycled Jeans and Felt Apron
To get started, we used the dresden template to cut six pink felt pieces trimmed down to the 3 1/2 inch marking. If you don’t have one, you can grab a pattern online.
We sewed them together on the machine.
To add the denim fabric to the center, we cut a large semi-circle then sewed the top fold down to create a finished look. We sewed the circle to the apron. The jeans have a great pocket and decorative stars so we cut those out and added them to the apron too.
The pocket is perfect for holding a cell phone while baking (according to eleven year old Zoe anyway).
Let me back up for a bit and share a little about the dresden template. It is actually a quilt block pattern that was inspired by decorated fine porcelain that originated in Dresden, Germany. It is often used to cut wedges that get sewn together and turned into flowers. We were curious to see how awesome it would be if we sewed a full circle of felt pieces cut with the plate and so we gave it a shot. We ended up making a darling table cover for our wrought iron round table in the back yard.
I love it because it is darling and it keeps things from falling through the holes in the table.
There are a few great tips that we have for using this Kaleidoscope Dresden Template if you are beginner with it.
- Start out with scrap fabric and practice cutting around it with the rotary cutter.
- Choose something simple for your first project.
- Felt works great because the edges do not have to be sewn to keep from fraying.
- Be willing to access your creativity. There are TONS of ways to use this tool!
Cheers to Sewing!
Laura