This year, my son is a bit obsessed with Knights after our trip to the UK, so I thought we had it all planned when he decided to instead go as his favourite superhero - Batman.
I have found a quick Batman cape tutorial over at Craftiest Things recently, but his main request was to have an authentic looking Batman utility belt. That proofed to be a bit more difficult to find. This image (below) I found on Pinterest was about the best reference to Batman's utility belt... but as you can see, hardly little kid material ;-)
I decided to make my own, and I kept it plain and simple with only two pockets made out of felt, looped through a belt made of yellow strapping.
The yellow belt was easy enough. I measured "Batman's" waist, and added 4 inches, looped the ends through a set of strap buckles and sewed it in place.
For the two pockets, I've cut two rectangles out of yellow fleece, sewed the sides shut, and cut the corners round to neaten it up a bit.
DON'T copy me here - silly me sewed the sides shut before adding the velcro closures... Anyway, with a bit of manoeuvring I managed to sew the velcro on, but it would have been so much less fiddly if I wasn't asleep on the job, and actually did it before closing the sides up!
The idea is for the little bags to slide onto the belt, so I measured the width of the buckle and then cut slits in the back of the felt pockets.
Of course there are neater and more sophisticated ways to do this, but as all time-poor mothers will testify - we do what we can, in the time we have :)
Not that "Batman" cared about that detail. He only noticed that the belt had no weapons to go with it!
So, of course I had to come up with the goods. I found images on the web that closely resembled the weapons of choice and printed that out to use as a template. I had black felt in my stash with a sticky backing, and stuck that onto a piece of card. Then it was simply a matter of trace with chalk around the template, and cut out the "weapons".
"Batman" approved his belt:) Only complained that it wasn't tight enough.. guess it didn't help that I measured over his pj's ;-)
I made a couple of changes to the Batman cape tutorial, and thought I'd share it here too. Craftiest Things' tutorial is a no sew, and while I think it's absolutely brilliant, I opted to add a couple of pleats in the back of my cape and used press studs to attach the cape to "Batman's" t-shirt.
I think the real feature of the cape is the sculpted edge on the bottom. I've made the "circles" a bit larger and on a slant to enhance the effect more.
Of course Batman needed a mask too:) That is another template from the wonderful web, traced onto black foam and tied with elastic. It's probably been the quickest creation for Book Character day ever, but my boy loved it, and I know this dress-up will get used again and again:)
ps... you are welcome to pin any of the photos in the tutorial, but please, do not pin or copy pictures of my kids! Thank you :)
