My sweet Willow’s birthday is coming up. She is going to be 3! My little angel has filled our life with so much happiness. One of her favorite things is playing dress up. For a while she had two dresses that she bounced back and forth between as a beautiful princess, but soon after she discovered the joy of wearing a cape. In honor of her newfound joy, I decided to make her a cape and crown and wand for her birthday. I kind of dreaded this project because I knew what I wanted it to look like, but also that I’d be designing it from scratch, as I hadn’t seen anything like this online before. So, I got cracking.
To start, I had Willow choose a bunch of her favorite fabrics. I wanted to make one side of it quilted and the other side one fabric, which I had thought would be a solid color, but she fell in LOVE with the outer space fabric with silver shimmering sparkles all over it (who wouldn’t!?), so I went with that of course. It became the basis for the entire project.
So, I made the squares for the quilted side and sewed them together. Then I sewed the edges on and that side became the pattern for the backing. I sewed the two sides together, hemmed the top and slipped a ribbon through for the tie that goes around her neck. FINISHED! Whew!
Next, I followed up with a princess crown. I designed my pattern on a piece of paper and started cutting. This one was so easy to do. I made it reversible for the ever-changing desires of my precious Willow. One side is outer space (which she calls “moons” by the way. Oh how I love her) and the other side is rainbow tulips. It turned out fabulous.
It also turned out that I had to make a second crown, as we have more than one little lady in our house (3 to be exact, but the baby doesn’t seem to mind not having a crown yet) and I wanted it to be fair. Willow found the crown before her birthday and is currently in possession of it (You might be thinking I’m a sucker for letting her have it early, but you try to take that out of her little hands. She just loved it so much! Plus she kept saying, “you made that for ME, mommy? Oh, I LOVE it!” Yeah, it’s hers forever.).
The wand was the easiest to make out of the three, I’d say. I had printed out star patterns when we were making our 4th of July decorations, so I grabbed one that was just the right size (about 4 1/5 inches across) and used it as a pattern for Willow’s star wand (I’m currently working on a matching one for Chloe’s crown). I sewed the star, stuffed it with wool, and used a dowel that I found in the garage (cut and sanded it first). I placed the dowel, sewed it into place after placing a few cautionary drops of tacky glue around the edges and finished it off with a bow.
I’m so pleased with these! They came out great. Aaaand it looks like I’m gonna need another cape and wand, huh.
