How To Make a Harry Potter Cape
My daughter is in 3rd grade. I may be biased, but I think she may have the coolest 3rd grade teacher ever. 🙂 Part of their curriculum is read-aloud time in class & one of the stories they’ve read was “Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone.” Her teacher is a big fan of the series, so we read the first 2 books before school started & I admit to being a convert! They have a class party at the end of the story, watch the movie, wear their house ‘colors’, and have Harry Potter themed foods. I know you can buy great authentic capes (lots of her classmates had them), but we thought it would be fun to make one!
We picked up some black linen from our local Ben Franklin store (which was a MAGNET for our blonde dog’s hair!). I’d never made a cape before, so we just held the bolt up to my daughter & ball-parked how long we wanted it to be. I’m not kidding. Super technical. I finished the edges with a simple hem (yep, kept it the same shape it came off the bolt!) & then we got serious about adding her house colors.
I used a satin with a grosgrain edge ribbon in burgundy, as it was a great color match. I pinned it to the edge & wrapped a bit around the end.
I wanted the ribbon to show as it draped, so I pinned it up the front, wrapped it around the top & made my way back down the back. You can see the small overlap that will be created in the slightly fuzzy pic above- sorry about that!
I machine stitched it in place & then added the gold metallic string with Helmar’s fabric glue. We held it the way we wanted it to fit & added more of the 1” satin grosgrain to each side for the ties.
She was so happy & it was a ton of fun to make it with her. I have to share some of the pics from the party- these are non-ribbony, but too great not to share!
Do you see those wands? One of my jobs was to make them from paper & hot glue. There is a LOT of hot glue in there my friends. It was so fun to see which one they’d pick & how they would paint it!
Chocolate frog boxes. I printed those on cardstock, cut, scored & assembled 26 of those bad boys. I won’t tell you how long it took. You can google the pattern if you’d like to try your hand. I can attest to the assembly time getting faster the more you do!
Butter Beer. Need I say more?
Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope you’ve been inspired!
By Jen Shears
Other Supplies Used:
- Black linen fabric
- Sewing machine & thread
- Helmar’s Fabric glue