Cape Tee Tutorial

*sound of trumpets*

A tutorial for the cape tee is here. It's my first tutorial, so my apologies for any lack of clarity. This whole "teaching people how to do anything sewing related" is new to me. 

 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

What you need:

  

*Fabric cut out for tee shirt

*Piece of lightweight knit for cape that is about twice as wide as your tee shirt body if you want some flutterableness, and at least a few inches longer than your shirt will be. (You want the knit to be lightweight so the cape isn't dragging too much at the shirt and pulling it back on your child's neck)

First, you're going to start with cutting out your pieces for a tee shirt that fits your child well. I used the Made By Rae Flashback Skinny Tee.

Cut out a piece of fabric for your cape

Fold the shirt piece in half, fold cape fabric in half. Align the folded edges and place the shirt at the top of the cape fabric piece. 

Sorry for the inconsistent fabrics in the photos. I had to patch together two versions of the shirt to make the tutorial. 

You will trim off the cape fabric right along the neck and shoulder edge of the shirt. Then, starting at the outer shoulder edge, cut an angle that fans out to the bottom outer corner of the cape. You should have a triangular shape that resembles the below picture more than the wonked out hack job on the red cape.....

(BTW, I wound up trimming a lot of the cape bottom off to about 4 or 5 inches longer than the shirt. )

Take your shirt back piece and lay it down with right side up

Take cape piece and lay it on the shirt piece with right side also facing up

Pin the cape to the shirt along the neck and shoulder edge

In order to keep the cape from getting sort of bunchy in the sleeve seam, I tucked my cape under enough to avoid the seam allowance. This will also set you up to hem the cape raw edge if you would like

Now, with the shirt front facing right side down,  pin shoulder seams over the top of the shirt/cape layers. Sew your shoulder seams on and press

It should look like this now once it's all pressed. The neckline will still be unsewn with some pins in it and shoulder seams will be neatly attached with cape coming out over the back.

Now you can proceed with putting your shirt together almost like normal. Attach sleeves, making sure you avoid catching any of the cape in them as you sew. 

When you attach the neckband, you will make sure the cape and shirt back are aligned neatly so that it all gets sewn into the neckband seam evenly. If you want to, you can baste the shirt and cape together before doing this. Just make sure you get those stitches out eventually so you don't lose any stretch in the neckline. 

When neckband is on, give it all a really good press and admire your work! You can try the shirt on your child and adjust the cape length to where you like it. You can also hem the raw edges of the cape. I didn't bother because it all just rolls up. Plus I'm lazy, and the backup sewing machine I'm using right now makes me mad. 

One thing I did do after the fact was to round out the corners of the cape at the bottom. It looks nicer that way, I think. 

 

Make sure you're ready to accept a lot of compliments on your sweet cape tee. Both of my girls have one now (pictures of version two coming....eventually) and both of them swooping around in public has attracted a lot of "where did you get those? You MADE them?" comments.