Invisibility Cloak - Happy Harry Potter

In honor of Harry Potter's birthday (July 31st) Rae Gun Ramblings is running a two week long series celebrating everything Harry and the series kicks off today!

Bean is really into make believe lately so I immediately knew I wanted to make an Invisibility Cloak.  She doesn't really know about Harry Potter yet, but I cannot wait until she's old enough to enjoy the book series.

Bean decided that a cloak (or cape as she insisted on calling it) should be purple, but I suspect that might be because it's her favorite color.  In any case, it seemed like a great wizarding color so I went to my stash and grabbed some purple sateen and a black and white polka dot fabric to use for the lining.

For the cloak part I thought I should use some performance mesh.  I haven't blogged about Bean's (inevitable) Elsa dress yet, but the one I made was with easy wear knits and for her cape-ish parts I used some performance mesh from JoAnn.  It's not cheap, but you only need about a yard depending on the length you want and if you use a good coupon (or better yet find it in the remnant bin and on sale!) it's not too bad. The mesh is a great alternative to tulle because it stretches a bit so if Bean gets it caught on something as she's running around OR if she steps on it, there's a bit of give so she doesn't just fall over.  It also seems to hold up and not get as many tears as a regular tulle would which is nice.  Oh, and it washes and dries really well.  I'm pretty sold on using mesh for these type of applications.

Anyway, back to the Invisibility Cloak...  The pattern I used for the hood is the Little Red Riding Hood Trench coat from Dear My Kids, which is a pattern I won ages ago and have been meaning to sew.  The hood is a separate piece from the coat so I thought it would be great as a starting point.

It turns out that the hood pattern is PERFECT for making a cloak.  The only change I made was to baste the performance mesh in two layers around the edge of one of the shoulder pieces before sewing the outer and lining sections together.  There was more than enough space inside the hood to bunch the mesh out of the way for sewing the pieces together.  Then when I flipped everything right side out and topstitched the cloak was complete.  Pretty amazing.

This girl.  We've already had fun playing with the cloak and I think it'll be super fun for when we're stuck inside with the cold of winter.  And it really was so easy to make that I'm thinking it'd make a fun gifting project too.  I had to include the following ridiculous gif of Bean.  She was so excited to show me how she would do a "spoooooky spell" and it cracked me up!

I hope you all enjoy the Happy Harry Potter series and don't forget to enter the big giveaway.  There's a lot of cool Harry Potter goodies to be won.  Just follow the Rafflecopter instructions below to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And don't forget there are still a few hours left to enter the Monthly MashUp Giveaway too!!