Body of the apron. It is cut from a single piece. To make it, you need a piece of fabric having 32 centimeters square.

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1 1918 #1 School Apron Tablier d Ecoliere To make this apron, you will have to draw seven patterns: one for the body of the apron, three for the yoke, one for the sleeve, one for the cuff and one for the belt. [Editor s note: This is incorrect. Five patterns are needed: two for the body of the apron, one for the yoke, one for the cuff facing and one for the belt.] Body of the apron. It is cut from a single piece. To make it, you need a piece of fabric having 32 centimeters square. This square, you fold it first in two in the direction of the width, then in two in the direction of the height. Then, you must have in [your] hands a quadruple of fabric with 16 centimeters on all sides. Trace and cut out the pattern, then place it on your fabric, its broken lines edge to edge with the fold of the fabric. These folds at the top (width) and vertical (height) follow the straight-thread. Do not cut anything along these broken lines, but cut around the other contours. Do not cut either anything along the broken line at the top where you see these words: emplacement de l empiecement [placement of the yoke]. Now, here is the most difficult. Unfold your piece of fabric on the table or the cutting board; you have before the eyes, the front and the back of the apron. Take again your tracing on which you will have indicated the lines giving the measurement and the placement of the pleats. Baste this tracing first on one of the sides of the apron (back or front) and, with a needle threaded with white thread, follow the lines while piercing the fabric and the paper. This done remove the tracing, and since you will be obliged to fragment it to remove it with scissors, you copy a second of our drawing and you begin again on the other side of the apron what you have just done. Then having our drawing under the eyes, you form the pleats with a single holding from one end to the other of the fabric. The lines where you read these words: pli de l etoffe [fold of the fabric] is the outer edge of the pleat: that which is seen; the broken line is underneath; it disappears from the eyes when the pleat is sewn. To make your pleat quite straight, here is the way: With a needle, threaded with white thread, you pinch the outer line of the pleat and you baste, without drawing on the thread, this kind of ridge from one end to the other

2 with the thread. Your two fabric sides being thus well applied the one against the other, it will be easy for you to make your pleat by sewing, with straight stitches, along your broken line. When this seam is made and well smoothed with the fingernail, because the thread should not draw, you remove the basting at the top [or the height] of the pleat. You thus have four pleats to make; you recall that our drawing gives you half only of each side (back and front). When these pleats are made, you fold up your fabric in four layers like at the beginning, and putting back the pattern on top, you cut out the neckline. [Editor s note: The back neckline differs from the front neckline.] After which you split the wide pleat of the back from top to bottom and you edge this slit by a hem in its upper half and you sew the rest as far as the bottom. Then put in shape this body of the apron by the seams of the sleeve and of the side. This seam begins at A and ends at B. At the hollow point of the underarms, you make once the seam is completed three or four small incisions, that will prevent the fabric from distorting. The small sketch C D G H shows you how the pleats must be arranged to form this wide pleat that you see in the front and at the back on the sketches. Empiecement [yoke]. It is cut from a single piece and covers all the top of the apron. So that it fits well, it is necessary that the broken line of the pattern is placed on the straight-thread of the fabric. Our drawing gives you half of the yoke; so, after having traced and cut out the pattern, you place it on the fabric folded double while putting the dotted line of the pattern edge to edge with the fold of the fabric. The yoke finished, you place it on the apron while turning it under all around. This turn under will be maintained by a sewing [topstitching] or featherstitching. If one wants to make the apron more elegant, one may make the yoke a different color, out of lawn or in white pique that one will place on the apron instead of sewing [topstitching or featherstitching] it: or out of cotton fabric a little knobby [twill?], khaki color, Swedish blue or any other shade which pleases. The parement [facing or cuff] of the sleeve will be done similar. The straight-thread belt is buttoned in the middle of the back; this band is of double width of that which is indicated on our drawing; it is folded in two. Its overall length is 59 centimeters.

3 It is fixed first at the back, through its middle, while forming an angle at the top [note dart a a in middle of belt], by means of a snap, and comes to cross in front as our drawing shows it then returns to be tied in the back (see the small sketch). Translation copyright 2011 Deirdre Gawne. Not for sale.

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