Smock vest from men's denim shirt

Here's a quick sewing project for converting a long-sleeved denim men's shirt into an oversized smock-style vest or apron with lined pockets.

I started with a long-sleeved denim men's shirt like the one in the photo below. (I forgot to take a "before" photo of my shirt, but mine looked almost identical to the one below.)

To make a pattern for the large patch pockets, I used my husband's Carhartt vest as the prototype. These pockets are large and deep, so there's plenty of room for stashing a phone, or my hands, or whatever else I would like to carry in there.

Husband's vest

I laid my husband's vest out flat on my fabric cutting table. Then I took a sheet of newspaper and laid it over the pocket. Using a pencil, I gently traced around the perimeter of the vest pocket to transfer its shape onto the newspaper, then I cut out that pocket shape. I placed the newspaper pocket over a piece of lightweight scrap cardboard I had in my craft stash and, using a ruler and pencil, I marked a half-inch larger (for the sewing seam allowance) to the size of the newspaper pocket around all the sides, then used the ruler to connect those lines, which are the lines for cutting out the pocket pattern on the cardboard.

Originally I was going to make the pocket pattern using a sheet of thin cutting-board vinyl, similar to the ones shown in the photo below, because it's rigid-ish and durable enough for multiple uses as a pattern guide yet thin enough to be cut to size with scissors, but I couldn't find the sheets today that I know I have in my craft stash somewhere, which I bought years ago for this purpose, so I improvised and used the lightweight cardboard instead. Either way, it creates a pattern piece that can be reused for future projects where I want to have this same type of pocket, and, either way, the pattern piece is thin enough to store with my other pattern files.

Vinyl cutting-board sheets

There are many DIY tutorials online for how to upcycle shirts (or even jeans!) into a vest. One tutorial that I enjoyed was this one by Broken Ghost DIY on YouTube. The way she cut off the collar in her project is very similar to the technique I used here. I carefully trimmed off the flap portion of the collar of my shirt, leaving the collar band below intact for a sort-of mandarin collar effect.

Next, I carefully cut off the sleeves, cutting outside of the seams where the sleeves were sewn onto the shirt (cutting on the sleeve side of the seams, in other words). The tiny bit of fabric left behind after cutting off the collar and the sleeves will fray in the wash and lend a rustic touch to the edges.

I laid my pocket pattern over one of the sleeves and was gratified to see that there was enough fabric in the upper part of one sleeve to allow me to cut out two pockets. If one sleeve hadn't been big enough to cut out two pockets, I knew I would have been able to use the tops of both sleeves to cut one pocket out of each. But since I was able to cut both pockets out of one sleeve, now I have another whole extra sleeve to use as scrap fabric for another project later.

For the pocket lining, I dug into my fabric stash and selected two pink bandanas just waiting to be needed for something. I think the pink bandana fabric makes a nice accent/contrast to the blue denim. All together, I cut two pocket fronts out of the denim and two pocket linings out of the pink bandana fabric and then pinned the pieces together with right-sides facing.

I sewed the pocket fronts to the linings, leaving an unsewn gap of a few inches at the bottom of each pocket for turning them right-side out.

After sewing, I trimmed the excess fabric at each corner, then turned the pockets right-side out and pressed them smooth with my iron. With the seam allowance pressed to the inside, I topstitched along the bottom edge of each pocket to secure the areas that were previously left unsewn for turning the pockets right-side out.

To position the pockets on the front of the shirt, I laid the shirt flat on my cutting table, with some of the buttons fastened to keep the sides even, and then placed the pockets where I thought they looked good, using my cardboard pocket pattern as a guide to ensure the pockets were level with each other. I pinned them in place and then tried on the vest to see if the pockets were positioned at a comfortable height for my hands. Once I had the pockets pinned exactly where I wanted them, I sewed the pockets in place with my sewing machine, backstitching several times at the beginning/end to reinforce the pocket openings.

A peek inside the pockets

The nice thing about making pockets this way is that there are no raw edges exposed anywhere, because they are all hidden between the pocket fronts and the pocket linings.

And, just like that, my smock vest/apron was done and ready to wear! 

 How the arm openings look after laundering. I love the frayed effect!

 

Dawn Apron by Lydia Naomi

When my husband went through his old denim work shirts a few years ago to throw away the ones that were the most worn out, I grabbed the ones he was going to toss into the trash and stuffed them into a bag for safekeeping.

"They might be worn out to you, but there is a lot of good fabric there," I said.

He just rolled his eyes, but he didn't object. 😂

Ever since that day, I have been planning to use these old shirts to sew an apron for myself.

However ... it took me a lot of years to finally get around to making it. Obviously. Ha!!

The Dawn Apron, pattern by Lydia Naomi

After we were able to spend time last year getting my craft room mostly set up, this year seemed like the right time for me to start diving into doing some projects that I had been putting off, like this apron.

I already had the fabric on hand, so the next step was to find a pattern to follow.

I've had a snap-front cobbler's-style apron for a long time that I like and would probably be an easy design to replicate. My mother-in-law was a big fan of this style of apron.

Examples of snap-front, cobbler-style aprons

But I also like the look of the Japanese-style cross-back aprons, so I decided that that was the type of pattern I wanted to make. 

I spent a lot of time digging around online for Japanese cross-back apron patterns. There's a surprising amount of variety to be found among patterns based on this basic shape. Then I came across this video by Canadian fashion designer Lydia Naomi for how to sew her Dawn Apron pattern.

Lydia's pattern had all the features I wanted in my Japanese cross-back apron: full length coverage in front, at least two pockets, and good coverage in the rear. Links to purchase her pattern are listed below the video on its YouTube page, or you can find them on her website, lydianaomi.com.

This was my first venture into the brave new world of 21st-century patterns being delivered electronically by PDF. Mind. Blown. (!!!) I did read some comments online where people were having trouble figuring out how to assemble all the pattern pieces after printing them out, but I didn't have any trouble. If you need some extra help, Lydia also has a video tutorial for how to work with the PDFs. Lydia's pattern pieces are numbered, and if you trim off all the page corners (as directed) and tape them together in numerical order, everything comes together very well.

Lots of trimmed-off corners and pattern pieces taped together in order

Pattern pieces all taped together and separated into cohesive parts

My next challenge was to deconstruct the old shirts to start piecing together the scraps to make new pieces large enough to cut out. I started by using one of the shirt fronts, with its button placket and chest pocket, as the top-front part of my apron.

Starting to reclaim denim from the old shirts, including one old shirtfront

This project gave me my first opportunity to use the overlocking stitch function of my Bernette B38, which is a standard sewing machine, not a serger. Because this apron is made out of denim, I wanted to avoid the heaviness of double-folded hems. Using the overlocking function, I could finish the raw edges of the fabric in a way that made folding it under unnecessary, similar to the way a serger does. 

Every time I needed to patch two pieces together, I would seam them using the overlocking stitch, then press the seam allowance to one side, and then topstitch the seam allowance to secure it to the panel. I think the extra, random topstitching looks cute with the denim material.

But then, as I was patching pieces together, suddenly I realized that I had accidentally sewed two pieces together with one right-side up and the other wrong-side up. Ooops!! Making a mistake like that means I'm tired, and it's time to close up shop for the day to go rest.

Right-side up on the left; wrong-side up on the right

The next time I got back to working on the apron, I ripped out the seam where the pieces were facing different ways, sewed them together the correct way, and then carried on.

Front panel pieces assembled and ready to cut out

 

Front panel folded and cut out, shown wrong-side up

Pockets cut out and edges overlocked

After that one mistake where I sewed the pieces together facing the wrong way, the rest of the project proceeded pretty smoothly.

I used parts of a total of three old shirts to patch together the pieces I needed for the apron. I even ended up with some "novelty" pockets on the back by using those parts of two other shirt fronts. 😊 I'm really pleased with how the apron turned out.

A little wrinkly after going through the laundry

A little wrinkly after going through the laundry