Lightening man goes to a party!

Remy's BFF turned four on the weekend. We were still lying around in bed late on Saturday morning when I realised that we hadn't bought the birthday boy a gift and we were due at his party in ...ooo, let's see... no time at all.

We chatted about what the BFF likes and Remy came up with the idea of making him a cape with a lightening bolt on it. What a fantastic idea! So we got to work.

Fortunately, there was a bunch of fabric still lying around from the pirate costume I made for Remy's birthday, so we choose a bright, patterned red for the lining (this is the part that contains all of Lightening Man's powers don't cha know?), and this very odd charcoal-coloured suiting material for the outside. (You know, I'm sure that I must have bought that fabric but I have absolutely no memory of what I actually bought it for. And it is nasty stuff! All polyester blend, stretchy, slightly scratchy awfulness, but totally fine for something that will probably get thrashed anyway).

It was at about this point that Remy collapsed into a heap and demanded that he too have a cape with a lightening bolt on it. Of course. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that I could just whip up two capes in a morning. Or something like that.

Boyfriend came to my rescue by fetching me a coffee and taking Remy off to the park. Ah, peace at last.

I cut the two pieces of fabric into my best guess of a symmetrical rectangle. I dug out some green felt and cut out an approximation of a lightening bolt, appliquéd it to the ghastly grey fabric. I sewed  the two rectangles together (with some elastic in the top corner), leaving a small gap in the side to be able to turn everything the right way out. Once I had trimmed the corners and straightened things out, I topstitched all the way around, still leaving the gap in the side. I sewed a tunnel for the elastic, pulled the elastic tight and sewed up the opening. Voila! It worked!

All that was left to do was make a button hole and sew the button on. And make a second cape. And make and eat lunch. And get ready for the party. And get to the party on time.

Of course, this was all NO TROUBLE AT ALL and we did all those things smoothly and perfectly and like we do this sort of thing every single Saturday ever.

Then we trotted over the hill and down to Union Street....

...jumped on a bus...

...jumped off the bus in North Beach, walked up the hill past Coit tower...

... and the TransAmerica building...

...got a lovely view of the Bay Bridge...

...and arrived at the party right on time!

Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the birthday boy wearing the cape. Once we walked in the door, it was pure birthday party chaos (and loads of fun).

We have another birthday party to go to this weekend. We haven't bought a present for that party yet.