Sew a Halloween Cape
From 1m of Fabric
How to: Sew a Cloak with 1 Metre of Fabric ! | Red Velvet Cape Tutorial for Halloween or Christmas
These easy sewing instructions walk you through the steps of making your own cloak (or cape) from a 1 metre length of fabric. Perfect for making your own devil fancy dress at Halloween or a festive costume at Christmas (especially if you sew white fur to the hem). It's also budget-friendly! I include lots of diagrams and photos to help you, as well as providing the sewing pattern and showing you how to measure out the fabric shapes.
This project is simple enough for sewing beginners; mainly because there aren't really any fitting issues since a cloak isn't form-fitting. If you want to make the cloak longer, shorter, wider etc. then just amend my pattern to suit your needs. I do a drawstring neckline, but you can of course change this to a toggle clasp or other fastening if you wish. I hope you have fun making it, and thanks very much for watching!
P.S. For reference purposes, I am about 5ft 8 tall. The photos at the start of the video show me wearing the cloak so you can see how long it is on me.
I started out with 7 old t-shirts and vests, all plain colours and made of regular jersey material. I already had a huge piece of striped jersey material in my collection so I used that for the backing. The end result is a bit wrinkled and my stitching isn't the neatest (don't look too closely), but I'm proud of it!
Note: If you wanted to make it into more of an actual quilt, you could add a layer of batting between the t-shirts and the backing. I didn't do this because I wanted to use it as a picnic blanket and so batting - which is added for warmth/insulation purposes - was not required.
(Please ignore the very retro carpet!)
The first thing I did was cut up and arrange the pieces of t-shirt into a pattern I was happy with. Make sure each piece overlaps its neighbour by a centimetre or two, and bear in mind that the smaller the pieces you use, the longer this projects is going to take.
Also make sure that the t-shirt arrangement is smaller than the piece of material you are using for the backing.
Next is the part that requires patience; basting.
I basted (used a long running stitch) along each join to temporarily attach all of the t-shirt parts together along all of the edges. This is the longest process and isn't fun. But it is necessary. You need to see how it all fits together as a 'test run', and this step will help you hugely when you get to the proper sewing.
I cut out a rectangle from the backing material so that it was at least a couple of inches (depending on the width of border you want) larger than the t-shirt arrangement on all sides.
I trimmed any excess t-shirt material away, especially along the edges to straighten them up.
Using my sewing machine, I permanently joined all of the t-shirt sections together, before removing the basting thread.
I folded each of the long edges (of the backing material) over by about 1cm, and then over again by a couple of inches to form the border. You can iron these folds in place before you sew, but to be honest I didn't bother! I added a few pins to keep the folds in place and sewed along the inner side of the border.
I made sure the border enclosed the raw edges of the t-shirts, but made sure I didn't enclose so much t-shirt material that the border would appear lumpy. Feel free to remove any excess material as you go.
I repeated this for the shorter edges, and it was finished!