Project: Cape

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).

For more information about Project: Project, read this post.

Other Crafty Endeavors

This summer I took advantage of semi-lax summer hours and a cooler-than-I-ever-remember-it weather pattern, and made a whole bunch of stuff for my kid:
This is a little drawstring bag lined with a shirt I bought at Gabe's just for the print. I appliqued these crazy animals onto it. They're from some fabric someone gave my mom. It's very weird and safari-esque. We put the finger puppets we bought last year at Old Navy into it.





I love this little fabric book. I cut out the animals from the new Eric Carle fabric that my local quilt shop surprisingly had in stock. I appliqued them onto some of my favorite prints from my stash. The facing pages are all solids. The inside of the cover also uses some of the fabric from the Eric Carle yardage. I didn't have a pattern or directions to follow so I just sorta went with it and I think it turned out well. I improvised a Japanese stab binding and it has started to come apart from toddler abuse so I'll have another go at that with some thicker thread or I'll double up the embroidery floss. That number print is Alexander Henry.

This is a travel highchair. If you do a google search you'll see what one looks like in use. I used some more fabric my mom gave me (her church quilt buddies gave it to her -- you can't buy stuff this amazing). There is also some polka dot and corduroy from my stash and that paisley print is a fat quarter I got free when buying from an Etsy shop that was having a sale. Oh, and of course, that Joel Dewberry pink faux boix that I can't get enough of (literally). I like the way the prints work together.