Homemade Jedi Robes
It’s the Easter holidays, so I will be relatively quiet here until the week after next. It’s amazing how having an extra child at home creates so much more work. There has been a birthday too, which has made me busy.
Don’t worry, we’ll talk about handmade Jedi Robes in just a moment!
It’s The Boys’ Birthday
Mini birthday chocolate muffins. I guess you could argue that the star decorations were part of a Star Wars birthday theme, but I didn’t twig until just this second that there was a connection. Let’s go with it…
Reversible Jedi Robes
Anyway, on to what I’m here for. I made a Star Wars costume for a three-year-old. For a bit of diversity, I decided to make it reversible. This gave the boy a choice of whether he wanted to be a Jedi Knight or give in to temptation and join the Dark Side.Â
I think it is safe to say that he has joined the Dark Side. I knew he would, which is why his big brother models the Jedi version. Not sure I’ve got my priorities right by buying him Kylo Ren’s lightsaber, but whatever, he loves it.
You need about three metres of each of the brown and black fabric. It was 45″ wide. I got it all from Amazon as I only needed cheap stuff. I usually only get fabric online if I don’t care much about the quality.
These DIY robes were actually really easy to sew. Apologies, but the old tutorial I used can no longer be found online; there are plenty of others to choose from. I made two robes (without hemming): one in brown fabric and one in black fabric.
With right sides together, I sewed them together, leaving a 5 – 6 inch gap in the bottom so I could turn the whole thing the right way round. Bagging out, right?
Initially, you ignore the sleeves, tucking them in whilst you stitch around everything else. Once it has all been pressed (don’t melt your cheap fabric as I did), the sleeves can be tucked into each other and their hems both folded to the inside, where they won’t be seen. A little bit of top stitching sews them together.
Top stitching around everything else also tidies it all up and closes the hole that was left at the bottom.
A Star Wars Fancy Dress Costume
Because it is just a fancy dress costume, I wasn’t particularly careful about how it all went together. I’m pretty shocked that it worked so well. I cut out the black fabric first and used it as a template for the brown so they’d both be the same size.
I had some minor unpicking to do at the beginning, where I messed up the shoulders. And I had some mighty gathering to do on the hood because it was so much bigger than the neck bit (it is supposed to be big though).Â
I think it’ll get too short very quickly, too; children grow so quickly. If I were to make it again, I’d add about three extra inches to the length of the robes.
Other than that, it all kind of worked. Three-year-old stomped around the house in Vader style and had a great time (there was even hands on hips and heavy-duty breathing).
Both boys got right into the spirit of it, which I loved, especially as my eldest hates dressing up and will usually refuse. My efforts rewarded, phew!
Oh, and I forgot to take pictures as I made it, so I can’t show a step-by-step thing. It’s not so important with the robes, as it was someone else’s tutorial.
Making the Coordinating Tabard
I bought a metre of calico for the tabard and used half (it was 60″wide).
The tabard was really easy to make. I had two rectangles, approximately boy-sized, and I snipped in a V shape at the neck. I sloped the shoulders slightly (downward towards the outside), then stitched the pieces together at the shoulders. I quickly (and shoddily) hemmed all around the raw edges and left it open at the sides.
It is tied closed around the body with a belt, which is a strip of leftover brown fabric that I folded in half lengthwise (with raw edges tucked in) and top-stitched.
This was the most basic way I could think of to finish out the Jedi outfit.
Then, after Star Wars shenanigans, they did “art” or, in other words, they painted themselves…
Such a mess.
