Sunday Surprise: Red Riding Hood Costume!

Happy Sunday afternoon everyone!

I'm sorry that today's Sunday Surprise is coming to you so late, but I have been working vigorously all weekend to finish my red hooded cloak for my costume to show you, and I have just finished this afternoon!

 

While I was in Seattle, I saw this super cute dress at TJMax that I had to have because it reminded me of Red Riding Hood for some reason. So I decided to buy it and use it for Halloween, but this dress is so cute I've been wearing it casually :)

After that dress, my quest for an awesome red hooded cloak began. I have a very specific idea of what the cloak should look like. The cloak should be legit, long and with a big over-sized hood. I didn't want the half length cloak made of thin costume material. I wanted this to be semi-heavy, covers all of me if I wanted and flow well, like Red's cloak from Once Upon A Time or Amanda Seyfried's in the 2011 Red Riding Hood film.

I searched online and there are some good and not so good tutorials out there for cloaks. Most of them weren't what I was looking for specifically. And I looked on Etsy, and the cloak that I wanted went for $200 - no way. So on my search I finally found a site that referred me to the Simplicity pattern #5794 that I bought from Joann's for $1. Finally, a pattern that I liked. I chose to make cloak C (which is the green cloak in the bottom right of the Simplicity image). The body turned out great but the hood just was not what I was looking for. So my quest continued, until I found this video on Youtube on how to make a cloak (click on the link if you'd like to see it). The instructions were kind of hard to follow but the little bit that I did understand, I used that to improvise and voila! Although the tutorial was for a knee-length cloak, the hood was exactly what I was looking for: over-sized and slouchy hood :) So I went for it and it turned out fantastically!

The image on the left is the cloak with the original hood from the pattern. I really disliked it, so I took it off and went for the other hood I found at the youtube tutorial I linked above. The image on the right is the complete cloak with the second hood. Although you can't see the new hood on that image, the image below shows the cloak with the second and final hood.

I had so much fun making this! It was a great first major project from scratch on my new sewing machine. I made so many mistakes on this project but I survived and I am so glad I stuck it out. If you have any specific questions about how I made this cloak, leave a comment and I'll be sure to get back to you! Also, since you know that I will be Red for Halloween, I would love it if you shared what you were thinking for your costume :)

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. See you on Tutorial Tuesday when I take you through the next step in canvas-making. Take care!

<3 Kara