Little Red Riding Hood's Cape

A little while ago, a friend of mine said that her daughter was a huge fan of Little Red Riding Hood, and desperately wanted a cape; so when my Dad gave me his old red velvet curtains, I could think of no better use for them than putting a smile on a child's face. 

I will point out at this early stage, that I made up this whole project as I went along. I have no pattern to speak of, which is why this blog entry is not presented as a how-to guide. I am simply showing you how I did it, and if you want to have a go at trying to do it the same way then that's entirely up to you. Anyway, on with the show.

I used: 1 red velvet curtain, scissors, a measuring tape, pins, needle and thread, cardboard, and a metre of ribbon. The ribbon shoowed in this photograph is white as that was all I had when I started this project, but half way through I decided that red would be better so I substituted it.

As stated earlier, I had no pattern to follow; so, to create the shape of the hood, I laid my dressing gown down on some cardboard and drew around it:

When cutting it out, I cut it a little smaller because this hood was to be for a child.

I then placed this template onto the curtain and drew around it; then flipped the template and drew around it a second time.

Because I wanted to keep the lining on the curtain, I pinned all of the way around my shape before cutting them out.

After cutting out both shapes, I hemmed the long straight edges.

I then placed both of the shape together, lining side out, and sewed all of the way around the curved edge to make the hood.

I measured Tiffany from shoulder to shoulder, and multiplied by two. This number became the width of the cape. I also measured her from shoulder to ankle for the length. I cut out a rectangle of the right size and hemmed all of the way around.

Now it was time for the fun bit, a totally new technique for me, gathering! I knew what I was meant to do in theory, but had never attempted it before.

Using a long piece of strong thread, I wove in and out along the full width of the cape. When you get to the end, don't tie it off or take the needle out just yet.

I then pinned the hood to either end of the cape to know how wide I needed it to be.

Then, and this part was REALLY fun, I pulled the thread so that the velvet gathered along it's length.

I then added some temporary stitches to hold the hood on and fed it through the sewing machine. It felt REALLY wrong to let bunched-up fabric go through the machine, but the result was satisfying.

Since the fabric is so thick, there were a few parts that didn't go through the machine properly, so these bits were finished off by hand.

The last part was simply stitching on some ribbon, half a metre on each side.

All in all, considering I had no idea what I was doing, I think it turned out pretty cute, and the result was one very happy little lady.

 Of course all of this meant that I did have to play grandma/big bad wolf 6 times in a row!

Also, before I go, I feel that it is my duty to warn you, VELVET IS EVIL! I have never before worked with such an uncooperative fabric. A whole bunch of tiny little threads came off it when it was cut, it clogged up and destroyed my good scissors. Also, the sewing machine hated it, it only went through about half of the time and the thread kept on snapping. Anyways, I think the end result was worth it, especially when Tiffany loved it so much she didn't even stop hugging it to fall asleep.

Total cost : 55p for ribbon

Total time spent : approx 2 hours