Step One

Before starting you’ll want to find the clothes to wear under your costume.  You want clothes in light earth-tones and brown boots.  You could use a slightly large white button-down shirt and fold the cuffs and collar under.  My older son wore a light tan long-sleeved shirt and younger son wore a brown sweater.  Both wore khaki pants.

Step Two

Make the robe.  For small children you’ll need to buy enough yardage to reach from wrist-to-wrist, plus a couple inches for the belt.  Have them small children you can have them lay across the Oly-Fun™ with their shoulder’s at the center fold as it came off the bolt.

For older children and adults, measure them from shoulder to where they want to robe to fall.  IF this length is longer than 30 inches, then you’ll need to take that length and multiply by 2.  Your new number is the number of inches of Oly-Fun™ you need to buy, plus 3-4 inches.  To draw pattern for older children and adults, fold your Oly-Fun™ in half, so that there are two lengths as long as they are.  Center their body over the center crease from the bolt and their shoulder at the new fold you made.

From here, the instructions are the same regardless of size, but the photos will show the smaller size for ease of photographing.

Draw approximately this shape.  (I had to review my shape a bit later, so the tan lines indication where you should mark and cut yours.  You don’t want those swoops.)  Make sure you leave a generous amount under their arms and next to their sides.  Besides the seam allowance, you also need some depth to account for wrapping around his/her body.

Mark on one side, then fold in half, and cut both sides out together.

Cut an opening up the front of the robe.

Cut a small neck hole for comfort in wearing.  (Mine’s not perfect.  I trimmed it up a bit after…but it doesn’t need to be perfect.  It’s not going to matter.

Step Three

The two sides of Oly-Fun™ are slightly different, but there is not a particular right or wrong side.  So using a 3/8 inch seam.  Stitch along under the arms and down the sides.  Clip the corner at the armpit.

Cut notches at any curves.

Turn right side out.

Step Four

ADDING THE HOOD

Cut a rectangle of brown oly-fun™ long enough to go over the head from shoulder-to-shoulder and deep enough to go from the face to the middle of the back of the head.  (When it doubt, cut it a bit large.  Since oly-fun™ doesn’t fray, you can always trim it later.)

Fold your rectangle in half (hamburger-style) and stitch from the fold to the end with a 3/8 inch seam.

 

Fold corner of the hood, so that the seam is in the middle.  Stitch a triangle and trim.  (This will keep the back of the hood from being too pointy.

  

Even though the oly-fun doesn’t have a right or wrong side on it’s own, our hood and cloak will have a right and a wrong side now, due to the sewing we have done.  So with RIGHT SIDES TOGETHER match the middle back of the hood with the middle back of the cloak.  You can pin if you like, but I just held the fabric in place and sewed from the middle to the front, and then repeated on the second side.

Since we didn’t measure our hood exactly with our neck hole, I ended up with a tiny big extra hood.  You can just trim it even.  No one will notice.  (Same goes if you have a bit extra cloak…just trim it until they match.)  We’re going for EASY here.

 

Step Five

Now we’re ready to put the whole costume together.  You’ll definitely need to get your hands on a light-saber.  There are ways to make them, but honestly, the store-bought ones with the cool sounds are so fun.  Ours were the super generic ones from Wal-Mart for about $3 each at Wal-Mart.  The dollar store can be a good place to pick them up.  Our you can get all sorts of authentic lightsabers online. (affiliate link.)

At this point you should have your robe done.  Cut one strip of dark brown oly-fun™ about 2 inches side.  Cut a piece of tan oly-fun™ about 4 inches wide.  These will become the belt.  (You could sew the dark brown strip onto the tan to keep them together as one belt piece, but I was trying to keep this as easy as possible.

Cut 2 strips of the tan oly-fun­™ slightly wider than the wearer’s shoulders.

Drape the larger tan pieces over the wearer’s shoulders.  Unlike our Rey costume, the drapey parts on the Jedi costume do not cross, but rather hang almost straight down.  Hold these pieces in place while you tie the wide tan belt around.  Tie in a knot in the back.  Then tie the dark brown belt over the top of the first belt.  Trim any extra that may be hanging down (but leave enough you can retie the knots for feature uses.)

Step Six

And once you add a lightsaber, you’re ready to go have fun training with other Jedis (would they let young padawans practice while using lightsabers?  Not sure about that…

…and do battle with a stormtrooper or two.

Step Seven

If you’re dressing as part of a character group, you might be interested in our easy Rey Skywalker costume, be sure to check out the 10-Minute Rey costume on my blog and the 15-minute Rey’s staff project here on the Fairfield site.

Note: The storm trooper costume is not hand-made…the nature of some costumes is just that they’re easier purchased.  The storm trooper is my 11-year-old daugther and we got it here.  (Affiliate link.)