A denim garden apron

I’m always leaving stuff like my garden clippers, gloves, and such just lying around the yard and then I spend precious gardening time hunting for them. So since my sewing apron (pictured in my banner) comes in so handy in my quilting room, I thought I’d make myself a gardening apron, too.

I recently ran across this ThreadHeads tutorial (courtesy of Apronista) for an apron made out of old denim jeans. And as luck would have it, Dan had just sorted a worn pair of jeans out of his closet and I had nabbed them for a possible project. So last night, I used some of the ideas from ThreadHeads and liberally adapted them to suit my own needs.

Here’s what I ended up with.


I love, love, love it – especially the re-attached waistband that now buttons in the back.

If you can’t tell, the main part of the apron is actually the pants leg cut off with one seam ripped out, and then turned upside-down. In other words, the end of the leg – the part that would be the cuff, if these were cuffed jeans, which thankfully they were not – ends up at the waist.

I made a deep horizontal tuck to form the large pockets (plenty of fabric for that -- he’s got him some long legs, that sweet husband of mine.) That put the ripped knee right in the front, so I clipped one of the pockets off the tush and stitched it to cover the rip. The whole thing holds together with some stitching along the sides of the two “underneath” layers and a straight vertical line of topstitching along the center seam.


You could do some really adorable embellishments on something like this, with lots of appliques and rick rack and fun embroidery. For mine, I just wanted something really basic and utilitarian that I wasn't afraid to get grimy and that I could throw into the washer and dryer with ease.

I came straight home from work this evening, put it on, loaded up the pockets and had an extremely efficient hour of puttering around weeding, clipping, watering -- with everything I needed right there!

If you have any interest in making this and my description doesn't make sense, leave a comment or e-mail me privately and I'll work up a little tutorial.