After my success with the purple hooded fleece cloak I decided to try a different version as a gift for a friend’s little girl, who is obsessed with owls. The great part about cloaks and capes is that they’re so versatile for costumes and general play, and they’re basically one-size fits all. I decided that a half-circle cape would be perfect to mimic an owl’s wingspan, and got to work.
As the weather has been cooling down I’ve realized that while my daughter may be excited to wear her princess costume for Halloween this year, it’s not exactly appropriate for a New England fall evening, not even with a turtleneck underneath. Remembering my own trick-or-treating years as a “ballerina princess fairy” (it involved a sparkly tutu, wings, and a tiara made of Christmas tinsel), I took a page out of my own mother’s book and decided to stitch up a cape made out of fleece to keep my daughter warm.
It would have to be purple, to match her costume and because it’s her favorite color. Happily, my local fabric store had 60″ wide fleece in a nice deep purple, so I picked up 2.5 yards and a yard of matching purple satin ribbon. The great thing about fleece is that it requires no hemming, and it’s thick enough to drape nicely as a cape without looking flimsy. I’d never made a hooded cloak before, but how hard could it be, right?
Once I had my design, it was just a matter of cutting the pieces out. The great part about this tabard is that it’s just geometry– no detailed ins and outs or anything like that. The only thing I had to worry about was getting the nap of the fabric right– because two of the arcs were facing in basically the same direction while the third was opposite, I cut the odd one in half to form the half-arc inserts, figuring that it would be better to keep things symmetrical. Interestingly, once things were cut and pinned there was surprisingly little difference between the two directions, so it didn’t matter much in the end.
For Halloween this year, my daughter (naturally) wants to wear her princess costume. Since we always do family costumes for trick-or-treating, I figured I’d wear my Grey Lady outfit and go as a queen, and my husband could be the king. He’ll basically put on anything if it makes our daughter happy, so while I’m sure he’d have preferred to wear a basic white shirt, maybe a basic cape and a plastic crown, I wasn’t going to let him off that easy.
It's All Frosting... 