I made my niece Gracie a fabulous cape using this pattern I found on the Martha Stewart website thanks to my amazing crafty friend Nikole who made an even more amazing cape for her daughter for Halloween last year from the same tutorial (hopefully Nikole will agree to be interviewed for Project: Project sometime soon). 
Gracie is the girliest of girly girls and just turned 5. So for Christmas I put together a bin of dress up clothes for her since I had heard she was the only girl in the neighborhood without one. I picked up a few things here and there but that box just seemed empty (even though it was overflowing with tulle). I decided a cape was in order and set out to make it happen.The directions were pretty easy to follow but I did have some problems. The Red Riding Hood cape pattern calls for 28" of fabric but FOLDED. So that means that you must have yardage that is at least 56" wide (so from a 60" bolt). The silver satiny stuff that I bought was 60" and it worked out just fine. Then I started to cut the pink and realized that it was from a 45" bolt. So even if I were to cut the pattern and create a seam, I wouldn't have had enough fabric. Keep that in mind if you want to make a cape from this pattern -- and really do your math if you want to make one of the longer ones.
But what a happy accident. I pieced together a panel from some of my favorite and most girly of girly girl prints to extend it. If I had remembered to add seam allowances to my cuts, this would have been simple. Ha! I used some grosgrain ribbon to make the tie and topstitched all the edges because I'm crazy and I love to topstitch. I think it turned out great and Gracie loves her special cape -- and it's reversible (if only I had a steamer).
2 comments:
It's very cute! She will love it, and all the other neighbourhood 5 year olds will be jealous! ;)
Thank you! It's also pretty big on her so she'll be able to use it for a long time.
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