Christmas Gift Idea – Sewing Projects

Here are the last two homemade gifts I made this year. I just recently relearned how to sew and am trying to broaden my sewing skills. I made a half retro apron for my sister and a fun sock monkey for my nephew. They opened them a week ago when they celebrated Christmas with our parents and both gifts were quite a hit!

For the apron, I followed a pattern from a book I picked up at the library called A is for Apron. There are lots of cute patterns in the book, but it didn’t get great reviews because the instructions are kind of haphazard and the patterns aren’t always correct.

My sister likes retro things so I thought this half apron would be cute. I picked up the fabric at Wal-Mart for less than $4 total, so it was a very reasonable project. My mother-in-law (who used to sew wedding dresses for a living) showed me how to use interfacing to make the waistband stiffer and how to line it to give it a more finished look because the book ignored both of these things. I think for my first piece of “clothing” it came out pretty good! And, it only took me a couple of hours.

I had ironed it, but then it got folded up in my luggage and I pulled it out quick to model it, so please ignore the wrinkles in these photos. Also, the waist band is made to be tied in the back, but it could also tie in the front like I show it here.

The other project I made was a sock monkey for my nephew. I found the tube socks at Target for $3.50 and had all the batting. This took longer to make than the apron because the ears, mouth, arms and tail were all sewed on by hand extra well to make sure no little toddler hands could yank them off easily. I posted more about this here. This is what the monkey looked like when I was finished:

Here is the cutie opening the gift and checking out his new friend.

Here he is in his little chair carrying on a conversation with him.

Looks like the sock monkey was quite the hit!

I’m linking up to Kimba’s DIY day with this post. Hop on over to check out more projects.