The Lemon Drop Apron Crochet Pattern

As you may or may not know, my day job is being an assistant manager at an Italian Restaurant, which is interesting for a lot of reasons, but also not what I want to do for the rest of my life for a lot of reasons. By the end of this post, the fact that I work in a restaurant will be relevant to the pattern, but for now my actual intention of bringing it up is not so direct. Working in a restaurant, you are very aware of annual events. For example, you learn not to work on Mothers Day because it will be the most crowded and dramatic day of the year, and you learn not to work Super Bowl Sunday because there will not be a single person in the restaurant, but you will have a bunch of guys ordering large quantities on pizza and only tip depending on how their team is doing. Moving this along to the point haha, we are currently in Graduation season which has led me to be wildly aware of the fact that I graduated high school a whopping 7 years ago. SEVEN YEARS. SO much has changed in the past seven years, my life is almost completely different than it was 7 years ago, and one thing that is incredibly different is my fashion sense. Things have a come a long way from have absolutely zero interest/competence where fashion in involved. I think by the last few months of senior year I was finally considering wearing dresses without jeans underneath, but I had not yet accomplished this. Once I started college I started taking it more seriously and I’m not going to even try to lie, it was partially because I was taking trying to get a boyfriend more seriously haha. Fast forward 3 years, I finally accomplished finding a boyfriend and suddenly I realized that what I chose to wear felt like it was now just for me and not to impress anyone. This shift in mentality really changed the whole idea of fashion for me, which is probably what lead to this entire crochet clothing adventure.

I don’t think that I ever really wore anything just to fit in, I always had to truly like it and feel like it expressed who I was, so when I first started looking into being more fashionable I was always on the lookout for fabric patterns that I really enjoyed. I specifically remember walking into a fancy kitchen ware store and seeing what I thought was the most perfect dress I had ever seen. A dress in a kitchen ware store?? Of course not, it was indeed an apron. I sifted through all of the aprons and kept thinking that if these were dresses I would proudly wear every single one of them. Thus began my love/hate relationship with aprons. I would have never thought that aprons could be so beautiful and stylish and I never would have thought that I would be so bitter that I could not wear them on a daily basis. I had recently expressed my love of aprons to my boyfriend, who was very perplexed that he never knew this about me considering I have never actually owned an apron. Little does he know that any apron that I could like enough to buy, I would also hate for not being a dress haha. So I came to the conclusion that I would make an apron, I could make a design that I would personally be happy with for being an apron and nothing more! Of course it only took 5 minutes for that dream to fail because I immediately wanted to alter this design to be a dress, but I shan’t let myself do it! I will accept it for the half dress that it is and be happy about it!

Materials:

• Lily Sugar and Cream Cotton in Country Yellow 
• Lily Sugar and Cream Cotton in Daisy Ombre
• Lily Sugar and Cream Cotton in White
• 4.00 Crochet Hook
  • I used a Furls Crochet Hook, I recently got my hands on one and they are so beautiful and comfortable!

Measurements:

• Across the chest 
  
• Underarm to Waist
• Waist to Desired Length
• Hip to Hip

Gauge:

• Lemon Peel Stitch – 3 stitches x 2 rows = 1″ x 1″
• Single Crochet – 3 Stitches x 4 rows – 1″ x 1″

Abbreviations

• LPS – Lemon Peel Stitch (you only need to know how to SC and DC for this stitch)
• CH – Chain
• C1 – Color 1
• C2 – Color 2
• C3 – Color 3 (The ombre)
  (Obvious you don’t have to use the same colors that I chose to, so choose whatever two colors that you like together!)

This top is comprised of two sections sewn together, the top half that will be covering up your chest and then the lower half which will be covering you waist to the length that you wish the apron to cover.

Top Section

This top section is going to be the size of your “Underarm to the Waist” measurement and your “Across the Chest” measurement.

Foundation

Working with C1, chain an even amount of stitches for your foundation chain that is equal to your “Underarm to Waist” measurement. Working an even number is necessary for the lemon peel stitch. Work one extra chain (this will be your turning chain).

Row 1:

1. SC into the second chain from the hook
2. DC in the next stitch
3. SC in the next stitch
4. Repeat steps 2-3 until you reach the end of the row (you should be ending on a DC)
5. Chain 1 and turn

Row 2:

Almost identical to Row 1, however you are going to be switching colors at the end of the last stitch.

1. SC into the first stitch
2. DC in the next stitch
3. SC in the next stitch
4. Repeat steps 2-3 until your last stitch
5.  When working your last DC you will be switching to your C2. In order to do this, you will work your DC as normal, but instead of pulling through the last two loops on your hook with the same color as you usually would, pull through those last two loops on your hook with your C2 color. This will help the color changes flow more seamlessly.
6. Chain 1 with your new C2 colors and turn

Repeat Rows 1 and 2 until your Top Section is at your “Across the Chest” measurement. Ultimately you are alternately working each color for 2 rows to create the vertical stripes. Make sure your first and last rows are the same color (C1) so that the stripes look even.

When you have reached this measurement, take your C1 and work SC stitches evenly all around the edges of the piece to clean up your edges.

Bottom Section

This is going to be worked just like the top section but it will be bigger. This section should be the size of your “Hip to Hip” measurement and your “Waist to Desired Length”  measurement.

Foundation 

Working with C1, chain an even amount of stitches for your foundation chain that is equal to your “Waist to Desired Length” measurement. Working an even number is necessary for the lemon peel stitch. Work one extra chain (this will be your turning chain).

Row 1:

1. SC into the second chain from the hook
2. DC in the next stitch
3. SC in the next stitch
4. Repeat steps 2-3 until you reach the end of the row (you should be ending on a DC)
5. Chain 1 and turn

Row 2:

Almost identical to Row 1, however you are going to be switching colors at the end of the last stitch.

1. SC into the first stitch
2. DC in the next stitch
3. SC in the next stitch
4. Repeat steps 2-3 until your last stitch
5.  When working your last DC you will be switching to your C2. In order to do this, you will work your DC as normal, but instead of pulling through the last two loops on your hook with the same color as you usually would, pull through those last two loops on your hook with your C2 color. This will help the color changes flow more seamlessly.
6. Chain 1 with your new C2 colors and turn

Repeat Rows 1 and 2 until your Bottom Section is at your “Hip to Hip” measurement. Ultimately you are alternately working each color for 2 rows to create the vertical stripes. Make sure your first and last rows are the same color (C1) so that the stripes look even.

When you have reached this measurement, take your C1 and work SC stitches evenly all around the edges of the piece to clean up your edges.

Waist Band

Next you will need to set up the foundation for the waist tie in the middle. In order to do this you will need to know how many stitches are along the bottom of your top section. You can find this number of stitches by taking the number of stripes you have and multiply is by 2. For example, I had 13 stripes of my top section, multiplied by 2, I have 26 stitches. Therefore, you must take your top section and work that number of SC stitches along the bottom of the top section. Personally, I did 4 rows of SC for the waistband, but you can make it however thick you’d like.

Next you will need to attach your bottom section onto the waist band. As you know, the bottom section is larger than your top section, therefore when you are sewing the two together you are going to need to double up on some stitches in order to make the bottom section fit onto the waistband. Unfortunately this means that you are going to have to do a little bit of math but I’ll try to make it bearable haha.

For example, as we know my waist band was 26 stitches long. My bottom section had 17 Stripes, multiplied by 2, my bottom section is 34 stitches long. This means the bottom section has 8 more stitches than the top section.

Once you have those numbers, you take the number of stitches on your waistband and divide it by the number of stitches you are trying to squeeze in. ( For me it was 26 / 8 = 3.25). Obviously I can’t work by .25 of a stitch, so let’s round the number to 3. The number that you are left with is your indication of what stitch to double up on, so when I was sewing my bottom section onto the waistband, I made sure that every 3rd stitch on the waistband I sewed in TWO stitches from the bottom portion. I hope that makes sense! haha

This is what mine looked like after I had completed the top and bottom sections and sewed it onto the waist band.

Trim

As you can also see in that picture, I have added some trim around the edges. I did this by taking my C3 which was an ombre color which is how the trim flows between white and yellow naturally without me having to switch colors. You can achieve this look by chaining 5 and slip stitching into the next stitch. Continue chaining 5 and slip stitching into the next stitch all the way around the apron to get the trim.

Ties

You will need to add ties for the waist and the neck. This step is pretty customizable, for the waist ties, make sure you work it at the same point as your waist band, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be as thick as your waist band. Additionally the placement of your neck ties is completely up to you! All of the ties can be whatever thickness and length you like based on what is most comfortable for you!

Make sure you weave in your ends and you are done! I was originally going to add a lemon slice looking pocket to the apron (which is how it got its name haha), but in the end I thought it looked a little tacky and I really liked the way the apron came out without anything else on it anyway so I decided to stick with it the way it was.

As always if you have any question please feel free to reach out, and if you end up making this apron tag me on instagram or send me a picture! I would love to see the final product! You guys are the best!