Sew: Nurse Capelet
I'm finally able to bring you the last part of the nurse costume tutorial series. Today's post is how to sew a capelet/cape for a nurse costume, obviously this could be used for other costumes too. I love how this looks with the rest of the costume, plus it is practical! Walking around on Halloween night can be a chilly situation so having this capelet / cape will keep you nice and cosy.
What you'll need
1.5m of Navy Cotton Poplin*
Interfacing (Optional)
White bias binding.
Cutting your Capelet
We will be making the cape in a similar way to how we would make a circle skirt. You will probably recognise some of the pictures from that tutorial.
Fold your fabric in 4. Find the corner with no raw edges. This will be the centre of your circle.
I used a pencil and string to mark my quarter circle with my string measuring 54cm/21". But feel free to use a tape measure and chalk or whatever works best for you.
Also mark a 10cm/4" quarter circle for your neck hole.
Cut along these two lines.
Once cut you should have a donut shape. Cut a straight line down one side to open the donut.
Cutting your Collar
Cut a rectangle measuring 10cm x 50cm (4"x20"). I had to cut two pieces and sew them together.
If you would like to interface your collar to make it more stiff then cut a piece of interfacing the same size. Iron this onto your fabric. I decided not to add interfacing since it felt like it would be stiff enough.
Fold the collar piece in half wrong sides together and sew the open edge closed.
Sew a basting stitch (long length stitch) along the inner circle of your donut, don't backstitch. Pull on the upper thread tails at both ends and gather your capelet until the inner circle is the same length as your collar. Tie your end tails together.
Lie your collar piece along the inner circle of your capelet, right sides together. Sew these two together using a regular straight stitch, try to sew this along the previous stitching of your collar.
Now, sew white bias binding from the tip of one side of the collar, down along the bottom of the capelet and up to the tip of the other end of the collar. Remember to fold under the ends of the binding to give it a nice finish.
The final detail on this capelet is the frog closure which keeps the cape shut. I watched this great tutorial on how to sew frog closure. If you don't want to sew this by machine you could hand-stitch the frog closure into place.
Sorry that the pictures for this tutorial weren't the best, I got carried away with the sewing and forgot about pictures! So this is the end of the nurse costume series, I've really enjoyed making this costume and so pleased with how it turned out. Make sure you check out the tutorials for the Hat, Skirt and Apron. I will update the blog posts after Halloween with pictures of me wearing the costume. Please send me pictures of your homemade halloween costumes on Twitter/Facebook or Instagram, I'd love to see them!
Goodbye For Now!
Thank you so much for this lovely clear tutorial. I just used it to make my daughter a nurse's cape for a school project. In case it's helpful to anyone else, I cut out the donut shape, but then stopped. I didn't cut the donut, just sewed around the neckline & the hem, leaving a gap to turn the garment ride side out.
ReplyDeleteThen I top stitched bottom & top closed.
It's just the right size for a 10 year old!
Thanks again :)