Cloak with Hood Sewing Pattern and Tutorial: FREE

Want to make a dress up cloak with a hood? Look no further — today I’m sharing a printable pattern complete with a tutorial! Suitable for children, and easily adjustable for adults, this is a quick and easy sewing project!

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house,
You could hear my son obsessively talking about all he reeeeeally wants for Christmas is a black cloak so that he can dress up like Darth Vader……(I may have rolled my eyes at my spouse.)

So I took out my sewing machine and some cheap black fabric from Walmart
And got to work sewing… after all, this boy has my heart.

It was quite fast and easy, so now I’ll share with you
A free printable pattern, and the process all the way through!

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2024 Update: Click here for my free tutorial on making a Jedi robe!

Supplies Needed:

• Fabric of your choice — 2 yards for a child’s size, more for an adult. (No more than 1 yard needed for the hood, then as many yards as you’d like for the cape — the more yardage, the swishier the cape!)
• Your basic sewing supplies: scissors, a sewing machine (if you have one!), needle and thread
• Sew on clasps to keep the cloak on
• My free printable pattern, found below!

Getting started on your cloak

Seriously, this cloak is so fast and easy to make!

I have made a ton of them over the years.

Cloaks are one of my kids’ favorite playthings!

They’re so versatile — you can act out so many stories with them!

I’ve made cloaks that are lined with silk that close with beautiful ornate clasps and are trimmed with the most beautiful and sparkly trim!

I’ve even made nearly 20 child sized cloaks for my aforementioned son’s birthday party.

They went GREAT paired up with inflatable light sabers!

It was a birthday party to remember!

I used clearance fabric for all those birthday party cloaks so that each cloak cost a little over $1 each to make.

It was cheaper than buying and filling up a pinata, and the children and parents alike appreciated it much more than candy and cheap plastic pinata fillers!

Those cloaks are still in circulation in those little guests’ homes!

While making those bulk party cloaks, I timed how long it took me to make each one.

Each cloak took me 15 minutes to make.

Not bad at all!!

So, I drew up a pattern for how I made these beloved cloaks, tested out my pattern, and now I’m thrilled to be sharing it with you!

Grab your free pattern below, print it out, and head back over here to the blog and I’ll walk you through the entire process on how to make a cloak!

Line up your cloak pattern

Now, there should be 4 total sheets of paper with pattern pieces on them.

All 4 of these pages will be assembled to one total pattern piece for the hood.

Line them up like this:

1 next to 2

then below 1 and 2 place:

3 next to 4

See the photo below to get a better understand of exactly what order you should lay your paper out in.

Creating an adult sized cloak

Now, for a larger/adult size for this cloak, leave your papers like this, with the edges of each sheet of paper touching.

For the adult size, tape these papers together, and cut out your pattern piece for the hood.

If you’re creating the adult size, you’ll want to trace imaginary (straight) lines to essentially “connect the dots” between each piece of paper.

Doing this will give you a larger sized hood.

The cape portion of the cloak for the adult size is completed in the same way as the child’s sized cloak — just with more fabric!

Creating the child sized cloak

For the child’s sized cloak, you’re going to want to push together your pieces of paper so that all the lines on the pattern pieces are perfectly connecting/just touching.

Your papers should look like this:

Tape your papers together, then cut out your pattern piece along the solid line.

This is the pattern piece for the hood of your cloak.

The front straight line is the front of the hood that will frame the face.

The curved back line will curve against the back of the head.

Your pattern piece should look like this all cut out:

Sew the hood of the cloak: both sizes

For the hood portion of your cloak, you’ll want no more than 1 yard of fabric for the kid sizing or the adult sizing.

Take the pattern piece for the hood and cut two pieces.

You’ll want the two pieces to be mirror images of each other.

You can achieve this by tracing one piece with the text on the pattern facing up away from the fabric, and the next piece with the text on the fabric down on top of the fabric.

Or, you can just fold the fabric in half, trace your pattern piece on top, and cut through both layers of fabric.

However you achieve this, you should end up with two pieces for the hood of the cloak.

Sew the hood

With the right sides of the hood facing each other, sew the curved edges together.

The bottom straight line and the front straight line should both be left open.

Turn your hood right side out.

Set it aside.

Make the cape for your cloak (both sizes)

The process for the cape of the cloak is exactly the same for both the adult and child size.

For the child size, you just need 1 yard for the cape.

For the adult size, you’ll want at least 2-3 yards.

Start by roughly determining the length of the cloak.

You’ll want a really wide rectangle. The “short” length of the rectangle should be how long you want the cloak, from ankle to shoulder roughly.

The long length of your rectangle is going to be gathered and attached to the hood.

To gather your fabric on a sewing machine, make some nice long stitches.

Don’t back stitch (make a knot) at the beginning or end of your line of stitches when gathering.

If you knot your stitches, you won’t be able to pull your thread to create that nice gathered look!

The long stitch on my sewing machine is here. It goes up to a 5.

Go ahead and gather the long edge of your rectangle.

Make your long stitches all the way across the top, then pull your thread so it looks like this:

Next, you’ll want to adjust your gathered edge so that it’s the same size as the neckline of your hood.

It should look like this.

You can stop here and switch your sewing machine back to a standard length stitch and make a second line of stitches across your gathered edge to hold the gathered portion perfectly in place.

I skipped this part.

Either way, switch your sewing machine back to a standard stitch length. Mine is 2.5:

Attach the hood to the cape

Next, we’ll attach the hood to the cape!

With right sides together, put the neckline of the hood against the edge of your gathered cape.

It’ll look like this:

Sew a straight line across your gathered edge/neckline edge to attach the hood to the cape.

Everything should look like this right now:

Sew your raw edges on the cloak

Next we’ll neaten up the raw edges on the cloak!

Fold your raw edges like this to create a hem:

First, we’ll sew one long straight line of stitches to hem the front of the cloak and hood of the cloak.

I drew some nice lines and arrows to show you exactly where you’ll be sewing a hem.

Follow the direction of the arrows and sew where the red line is drawn:

Lastly, make any final adjustments to how long you would like the cloak to be.

You don’t want to trip over it!

Hem the bottom of the cloak.

Lastly, sew on a clasp right at the neckline.

That’s it!

Your cloak is finished!

Leave a comment, and check out more free patterns!

I’m all about giving away free patterns of all kinds to bless your loved ones with!

Handmade home is my style!