A Thrifter in Disguise: Halloween Witch Costume Part 2: Fleece Cape

DIY Witch Costume Featuring Fleece Cape

This bewitching accessory serves a dual purpose: it's cute and it'll keep 'em warm!

These capes were not part of my original plan for the girls' witch costumes (I really considered the Wicked Witch Tutus to be the pièce de résistance), but I'm so glad I decided to make them, because I like how they pull all the pieces of the costumes together. The only reason I even thought of the capes was because I was really just concerned about them being warm enough during trick-or-treating. Because it always goes like this in the Northeast: when you're planning your Halloween outfits, you're still basking in the last few weeks of Indian Summer, so your Halloween decisions tend to be made with those temperatures in mind. And then all of a sudden the last week of October rolls around and it's FREEZING. So layers are a necessity, especially for the little ones. In fact, I'm probably going to make them wear at least another two layers under their long-sleeved tee shirts. But, I know that this cozy cape will help a bit with the insulating factor, so in reality, Mother Nature was the "practical inspiration" for this piece.

In an effort to come up with a design, I did what I always do when I'm starting a new project: I Google. I think I googled "DIY Fleece Cape," or something like that. And my trusty friend Google never lets me down; as I expected, I was provided with a long list of cute blogs in which kids capes were showcased. But in this case, one blog stood out in terms of what I was looking for. I found my "creative inspiration" for the witch capes from these awesome Super Hero Capes at a pretty cool life... which, incidentally, is a very cool blog :)

I followed her basic design to make the witch capes, but I made a few tweaks here and there (because super heroes and witches would never wear identical capes!).

Here's how they came together:

DIY Fleece Witch Cape Materials

1/2 yard of fleece fabric (I used black fleece-$5.99/yd at Joann's; with my 50% coupon that brought it down to $1.50 in material for one cape)
1 roll of 9' ribbon (I used the extra ribbon to adorn the hat and broom)
Hot glue
Flower pin (ours were $2.50/each in those discount bins at Joann's)

DIY Fleece Witch Cape Instructions (pics are below for the visual learners)

(I made these for a 4 and 5-year old, you may need to adjust lengths accordingly. I just lined the material up against their backs and decided how long I wanted it).

Cut fleece to 35" wide x 20.5" so you have a rectangle shape.
Fold fabric in half from the side so now you should have a double rectangle that is 17.7" wide x 20.5" long.
From the TOP OPEN SIDE, measure 10" and make a mark (I used tape).
Cut a straight, diagonal line from the 10" mark to the BOTTOM OPEN SIDE.
Make a jagged edge by cutting triangles out of the bottom. How big/how many is up to you.
Hot glue a strip of ribbon down the front sides of the cape. You could sew this down and it would probably look nicer and last longer, but I didn't want to bother with seeing the stitches.
Create a double-sided ribbon band by hot gluing the front and back sides together.
Sew or hot glue the band to the top corner of one side of the cape. You can see in the pics I sewed it on then covered my stitches with a cute button. I didn't do that on the purple one. I just hot glued it. This step may be completely unnecessary, because really you could just use the pin to keep it closed. I was just worried about it being too tight around their neck and hearing them complain the whole night trick-or-treating, so I wanted to build in a little padding :)
Use your pretty pin to hold the sides together. And try not to stab your child in the process :)