Halloween: How To Make Star Wars’ Jedi and Sith Lord Costumes for Kids | Obie Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader | Sewing Pattern
For Halloween this year, Pax wanted to be a Jedi. I asked him what his little brother should be then and he suggested that he be an evil Sith Lord…hmmm. Anyhow, I was on the ball and started on these costumes a week ahead (rather than the night before, like my husband and I did for the last couple of years).
While I’m sure the boys don’t really care where their costumes come from, I find store bought costumes to be quite expensive and low quality. As a parent, the easier way and less stressful perhaps is to just buy one. I guess Halloween gives me the opportunity to make something different and special for the boys, so I always try to make them their costumes.
To complete the look, my husband bought these M&M light sabres which also dispenses candies from the bottom.
In my wildest maker’s universe, I would have time to draft all of my sewing patterns for every project I did. Drafting a pattern takes a lot of time, so I didn’t do that for the costumes. I remembered I bought a pattern book a few years ago called, Little Things to Sew by Oliver + S. In it is a sewing pattern for a child’s cape, so I used that and adapted it for the Star Wars costumes.
The pattern is for a Little Red Riding Hood cape. It’s a fully lined pattern that comes in 2 sizes, medium and large. I made both of the capes in medium, which seems to fit up to a 5 year old.
This is the first cape I completed. It’s for Pax, who’s 5. I used a 100% cotton lightweight fabric and lined it with the same fabric. I didn’t make it with the hand slits, like the book shows, since it’s a costume cape. Also, I used a little brass snap button for the closure rather than a regular button.
For Nol’s costume, I used the same cotton fabric in black. I decided not to line this one to make it a lighter weight. Instead, I serged all the seams (I bought a new serger which I wanted to try it out, but that’s another blog post). I actually like it better unlined for a costume cape because it was lighter and not as warm, since the kids run around in them.
Here are the 2 pretending to be all good versus evil. So the medium size sewing pattern is good for ages 2-5.
The patterns in the book come in 2 large sheets. I usually don’t like to cut the patterns out from these sheets because if you need another size they provide, you won’t be able to get that anymore. Also, I like everything to stay in tact.
I traced the pattern onto my own paper and worked with it that way. Tissue paper works really well for this purpose. It’s good to save the tissue paper that you get from shopping at stores, so you don’t have to spend money on that.
This is a pretty simple project. I would say that if you have basic sewing, you can tackle this. The instructions are well laid out and clear.
The cape does have a lot of curved seams, so what you have to do is clip the curves to have a nice fit. I think the book shows you how to do this.
There are 20 simple sewing projects in the book. I also like these sun hats (there’s also a pattern size for adults), the penguin backpack and the play town soft toys.
Overall, this is a good book to get to make things for kids. Luckily I remembered I had it for making the costumes, so it cut down a lot of my pattern drafting time.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. I haven’t made a lot of things outside of making bags, so this was a good aside.
