super hero cape tutorial

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. Our house has been overtaken by super heroes. Henry is officially obsessed with all things super. So naturally when I asked him what kind of birthday party he wanted when he turned 3, it had to be Super Hero themed. 

Since I harbor a deep loathing for Party City - have you been in one of those? It's like a friggin' labyrinth in the seventh circle of Hades - we are having a homemade version. More akin to the Adam West style campy super heroes that I loved to watch on Nick at Night as a kid. By now you all know of my great love affair for all things 1960s. Sidebar, it just occurred to me that I may have subconsciously named my second born after Maxwell Smart, which also came on Nick at Night. Whoops. At least I didn't name him Joe Friday. 

At any rate, I wanted to come up with a party favor that: 

1. Didn't cost a ton of money. 
2. Wasn't made of cheap plastic that would break within moments of the kids leaving. 
3. If it didn't break by some miracle, wouldn't junk up my friends houses or be so loud that they all hated me. 

My solution: Super Hero capes for everyone!

You might think I'm moderately crazy for willingly volunteering to create upwards of a dozen custom capes. You may be right. Only time will tell. But I will say that they are super easy, and fast, and you only need the most basic of sewing skills. 

To the bat cave! I mean, sewing table. 

the goods

• jersey fabric, roughly 30"x30" per cape (I used 60" wide knit so I could get lots of capes out of it). Below I'm showing all of the colors for multiple capes. I went with a red/yellow/blue/black scheme. I got 2 yards x 3 colors, which will make around 12 capes
• 9x12 felt in 2 coordinating colors
• coordinating thread
• a printer

1. Create the template for the name. To make life easier on myself, I downloaded this free comic book style font from dafont.com. I like this website because it didn't secretly install some toolbar or unzip software or other junk. It just gave me the font. Thanks. I set Microsoft word to landscape orientation and did the largest font size that would print in a single line on the page. It's probably somewhere between 150-200 point font for most names. Print it out. (bet you can guess which cape is getting made after Henry's...)

2. Pin the name to one piece of felt. Cut out. I connected most of my letters to make my life a bit easier. See below. 

3. Cut out your starburst to go behind the name. I just free handed mine, but Microsoft Word has a couple of shapes you can drop in and adjust to size if you desire. 

4. Stitch the name to the starburst. Be sure to pin it down, because the felt will creep on you. I went with a contrasting thread for interest. If you don't have that much faith in your sewing skills, use a matching thread. I stayed about 1/8" from the edge. Or at least that was the goal. 

5. Cute huh?! Now it's time to cut the cape. Here's a sketch of what you're going for. You basically start with a square, and you want a triangle with a long 2" stripe at the top.

You can measure your kid later to trim if needed, but I found that a good rule of thumb is to take the height of your kid and subtract 14" to get your length. That's long enough to look cool but short enough so they don't trip all over it. See my beautiful model below. He's 41", so subtract 14" to get a final height of 27". 

This is also a good time to pin your starburst. I placed mine about 12" on center below the strap. The placement looks best when it's mid back.

 

This is where you're going to be happy we are using jersey. You don't have to hem this. Hoorah. OK. time for some actual sewing. If your house is like my house, you now have to clear all the crap out of your sewing area. It's sooooo nice to have a dedicated sewing table, but it's such a pain that it is somehow the dumping ground for everything that comes in and out of our house.

6. Take your 2" strap at the top (these are going to be the ties) and do a double fold like you would do when you fold a sheet of paper to go in an envelope. Pin it along and stitch the 3 open sides. I used may gig thread for this. No need to draw attention to this part of the cape. That, and I'm lazy and wouldn't change the thread again. 

7. For extra insurance, I flipped the whole "stripe" down onto the "triangle" body of the cape and stitched it again. I did a little zigzag number where the sides met. See below. Sorry this picture blows. I was losing daylight.

At this point, your 4 month old teething baby may have grown weary of this project. You may also find yourself working in near complete darkness because of the dummy that designed your house with no overhead lighting. Good times. The sound of the sewing machine was soothing to Max...until it wasn't. I powered through because, dad gummit, I wanted to just be able to finish a sewing project in one day for once.

8. Time to stitch the starburst down. I used the same red thread again. I stayed pretty close to the edge; about 1/8". 

Pretty sweet, huh? Total time for this project was under an hour (with about 13 starts and stops to care for screaming children) and the subsequent ones have gone even faster now that I'm doing them assembly line style. 

I am getting really pumped about the party in 3 weeks. Lots of cute handmade ideas in the works that I can't wait to share with you guys. Henry seems excited too. He's barely taken off the cape. And he even asks me if he can help me sew. Too cute.

Couldn't resist sharing one more shot of me and my sewing buddies. Max was much happier at this point.

How is it possible that this sweet little face will be 3 in less than 3 weeks?!

Any other Super crafters out there? What are your favorite hero projects?