Reversible Superhero Cape (tutorial)

I made this reversible superhero cape for my little friend Mikey. Mikey is one of my favorite little boys- so sweet, smiley, and easy going.  He laughs at everything and his girlish high-pitched squeals and giggles capture my heart.   If I have a little boy, I want my child to be just like him, he’s just adorable.  He loves the Disney movie Cars and when I babysit him, he often zooms all around the house whispering “Focus. Speed. I. Am. Speed,” running around with his little clenched fists in front of him.   He sits in his little carseat behind me while I drive, keeping himself entertained by repeating “I am lightning. Ka chow! Ready, set, go!”  It’s hilarious!  He has an extra special place in my heart because I babysat his older sisters while his mom was at the hospital giving birth to him so I can’t believe that he just turned 3 years old!  It was fitting that he had a Cars-themed party. He was a superhero for Halloween last year, so I thought I would make him a cape for his birthday that combined both of his loves.  What little toddler wouldn’t love their very own superhero cape?

I had a rough idea of how I was going to sew this cape in my head but I mostly made it up as I went along. All I had to go off of was this very precise pattern that I doodled:

I started with this nice blue velvet fabric, which I folded in half and pinned in place. (If I had red fabric on hand, I would have done the Lightning McQueen side using red fabric just to make it more different) I was going to draw one half of the cape against the fold and cut out so that when I unfold it, both sides would be even:

For the neck hole, I traced a 5.5″ bowl, lining half of it against the fold:

Then I drew out the basic pattern for half of the cape:

Cut and unfold the cape so that it looks like this (I added the rough dimensions for a cape sized for a 3 year old):

I used this piece as a pattern for the backside. I traced and cut out an identical piece so that I had two matching pieces, one for superman and other for lightning mcqueen.

I drew a superman logo with an “m” for Mikey using photoshop about 8″ wide and printed it out. It took a few tries to get the size of the logo just right. I placed the logo on the cape to get a good idea of what it would look like, made adjustments and reprinted:

For the Lightning McQueen logo, I found one by googling and printed it out to the right size:

I then cut out the logos from the paper and used them as patterns to trace on felt. I cut out the felt logos and placed on the cape (sorry for the dark picture, by this time, it was getting late into the evening):

Then machine stitched the logos in place on each side:

“95″ for Lightning McQueen:

To put the whole cape together, pin the two pieces right sides together and sew all around the edge, leaving a 5″ opening to turn inside out. Turn the cape right side out and then top stitch all around the cape, sewing the 5″ opening shut.  (Sorry, no pictures of this because it was approaching 1am in the morning when I finished) I sewed velcro on both sides of the neck ties so that it would be easy for a 3 year old to put on and take off:

I wish I got a picture of Mikey “vrooming” around the house with his cape on!! He looked super cute!  And now he has an outfit to wear when his older sisters want to play dress up! He won’t be stuck wearing one of their many princess dresses and tutus!

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tagged as: felt, sewing, superhero, tutorial