Batman and Robin cape tees

I know it's Halloween season and theoretically these would make great costumes, but I already had plans for other getups for my kids and these were just for fun. LOTS of fun. They would make great thrifty costume choices for anyone with superhero loving kids.

 

I made a tutorial for these cape shirts a while back (thinking of a name for them...."awesome anywhere" shirts? lol. my kids feel awesome everywhere they go in them) and there's a previous version below in generic repurposed fabrics. She can be anyone in it, which I like. But the kids are way into Batman and Robin at the moment because of the Lego batman movie I got from the library.

Loads of swooping around in capes and leggings, and heroic sounds like "dun duh nu nunnnnh!" has been filling our existence. They begged for proper costumes. 

So we took a trip to the thrift store to get some "fabric" and came out with 4 men's  tees to make their dress-up out of.  8$ spent.

Seriously, most fun photo shoot EVER. Running, jumping, dancing. I took them to a nearby community green in a cute shopping center with a.....COMIC BOOK STORE. We swooped and ran there afterwards.

I'm pretty sure this ^^ needs to be on a wall in our home someplace.

Clover's batman shirt was made with the flashback skinny tee pattern in a 3T width and 5T length. It fits her perfectly. The only hitch was that I didn't have enough tee shirt left to cut the second sleeve from, so I spliced together a couple of scraps. That's why there is a seam on her right arm. She doesn't seem to mind. I thought the Army shirt I got was cotton, but after closer inspection (after I took it home of course, because inspecting closely isn't easily done with a fussing baby attached to your body) it was some weird polyester. It wouldn't press, and even if I tried it started sticking to my iron. Gross. 

I love the thrift and unexpected finds involved in buying secondhand clothes for fabric, but the major downside of it is that I'm very sensitive to chemical smells, including scented laundry products. All scented detergents, soaps, dryer sheets etc are banned from our shopping list. But when I get some used shirts home, it takes forever to get the awful smell out of them. You can't just wash that stuff out. It clings on and on. Sending a puff of steam from the iron also releases a big cloud of yuck into the atmosphere. My atmosphere. The kitchen ends up smelling like laundry day in our neighborhood, when all of the dryers are piping hot nausea and headaches out of their vents and into the sidewalk, sending me back home and shutting the windows. My poor husband lives with a scent nazi.

Watch out, villains!

Violet's shirt is made with the Figgy's Banyan pattern, which I think fits her body well. I used the boy tee length and girl tee sleeves and shoulders, blending the two to make a regular tee. The Robin R is stenciled on with fabric paint. Selection of shirts at the thrift store was slim and I had a hard time avoiding some choices that weren't my favorite. Like the beefy tee weight and lack of softness of the red, which has low stretch and bad drape. Violet needs help getting this thing on and off as a result because it's not stretchy enough. She needs help getting out of it anyway though. Like bribery or force kind of help.

omg do you see Violet coming in from behind? 

To make the emblem on Clover's shirt I printed out the bat symbol and cut it out just around the oval, using that as a template to cut the yellow fabric. Then I cut the bat out of the paper oval and used it to cut the black fabric. Before cutting into the knits though, I interfaced them with the only stuff I had around, which is a woven fusible cotton. This really helped them both keep their shape while I cut and sewed.

At 7 am I was feeling ambitious or foolish or something and thought "gee, hand stitching would look great on this. It won't take long." Maybe it would be a quick project for a normal person, but the inmates here kept messing with my stuff, and the baby inexplicably kept wanting to eat. So it took a while. Hand sewing while nursing is slooooow. "Is it done yet? Is it done NOW?" Clover was walking around shirtless in waiting for her new shirt, and was. not. putting anything else on till batman was ready.

"We're getting married!" They think dancing = marrying. Isn't there some thing about the dynamic duo being more than just..... business partners?  You can see the bat wing points I added to Clover's cape in this shot.

Sweet joy. They never hug. Between their gleeful laughter and this my heart was feeling pretty full.

They want to know when we can do this again.  Is a weekly cape party in the green in order?

We swooshed and darted into the comic book store after the securing of the grounds outside. Batman was positively angelic inside, while Robin was kind of a rubber ball. But a cute rubber ball! 

Between real Halloween costumes waiting to be made and kids clothes week coming up, I'm nervous about the rest of this month! Ack!