If you follow me on Instagram, you will know that my elder daughter is obsessed with the movie Frozen. Actually, both my daughters are. The baby just adores the songs and the music. But the small girl is just totally in love with everything about the film - she watches it (or part of it) pretty much every single day, and weekend mornings mean one thing in this house for the last month - breakfast dates for me or her dad with her, snuggled up on the sofa watching Frozen. We have the DVD, the soundtrack...everything. Except the clothes, obviously - them being sold out everywhere.
My small girl is a singer and she spends a lot of time treating us to renditions of all the songs. But its hard to sing Queen Elsa's part when you don't have the cape. Towels and safety pins have been in high demand here for the last few weeks and this week I decided it was tie to finally reclaim my towels and for her to have a proper, flowy, glitzy cape.
I took myself off to the local craft shop, Vibes and Scribes here in Cork, where I knew I would find everything I needed. Half an hour later, after a very pleasant rummage around, we emerged with a couple of metres of shimmery turquoise organza, a string of sequins, some glittery feathery things which the small girl picked out and some stick on velcro. (I also found, finally, a twin needle for my sewing machine which I am itching to try out.)
As soon as we got home, I got crafting. I had found
this tutorial last week and found it really clear and easy to follow for making the cape. I used an old roll of wallpaper to draw my pattern on. The recommended width for the pattern was 18", mine was 20" and it worked fine as the fabric was wide enough. I cut it pretty quickly, and then I used the flame technique in the tutorial to seal the edges. I was *highly* dubious that this would work on my (pretty cheap) organza and had visions of setting the house on fire, but it worked brilliantly. You just run the very edge of the fabric quickly along the edge of the flame. It seals it and it gives it a lovely, ripply texture edge too.
I changed the neckline a little - I cut back the collar pieces as they were too long (I might have used too big a bowl to cut the shape) and then, because a girl can never have too much glitz, I sewed a string of sequins around the neckline. This was easier to do than I anticipated. I used a size 16 needle and just sewed a straight stitch over them - I had a turquoise thread which was a perfect colour match, which helped.
Then I cut the end off the feathery thingy, and I used a zig zag stitch to attach to the neck, over where the velcro would go. Lastly I attached that, and, hey presto, we had a cape.
I might go back and use the leftover sequins to sew a snowflake at the bottom of the cape, but to be honest, its not necessary and I will be lucky to get my hands on it that long. It was a huge, massive hit and all her friends were suitably jealous :-)
Now, she can sign "Let It Go" properly. But poor mum now needs to make the dress to go with the cape. Eek.
