Making a Cape (It's not Weird)

 At the start of last year, a company called American Duchess released a free pattern based on an original 1910 wrap cape. It has pleated wrap bit at the front that tie or clip at the back and a collar.  Maybe it was the pandemic, or maybe it was just the need for a wrap cape in the modern world, whatever the reason, sewing people everywhere started making these capes. 

Image from American Duchess

I did see quite a few of these (#ADCapeCult) at the time, but shelved the idea of sewing one myself because Brisbane winter doesn't usually call for a cape. Besides which, I've never sewn something classed as "outer wear" and figured it was not really for me. 

Enter June 2021, and the month of crazy business, which happened to include two winter weddings, one of which was in Sydney. Weddings are the kind of event that a fancy cape would not feel out of place at. And a winter wedding meant that a cape was a justifiable item to make simply for warmth. I went back and forth for a while, not knowing what to make a cape from, and not sure if I had the time, but then just realised that I really wanted to give it a go, and if not now, then when? 

I asked the Brisbane Spoolettes for advice on fabrics and heard that wool cashmere was the way to go. Pandemic in full swing again, and I didn't have time to actually go to the shops, I feared buying online, when my friend who owns Sewing Adventures, the sewing studio offered to let me have a look at some she had recently brought to see what I thought. 

The fabric was beautiful, so I went home and very nearly ordered the musk, but ended up going a safe pewter (kind of black, but not solid), to suit the formal nature of the weddings and for re-wearability. I also ordered some shiny lining fabric at the same time, thinking that was the right thing to do. More on that later. 

Given that I had never sewn a cape before, and I wanted to make sure it was 100% wearable to some fancy weddings (not the least of which was my very own sisters!), I first made a practice run out of some random fabric that I think Aunty Sue from Sydney gave me. Good thing I did, because the fit in the shoulders was off. Don't let my excited smile fool you, there is lots to do ahead. 

Lots of research about what other people had done to solve similar issues and I unpicked and adjusted to try again. 

More changes to be made and a third try on the rough draft and I was finally ready to cut into the real fabric. What a marathon this cape was turning out to be. Cutting the real fabric however, turned out to be way more complicated than I expected. The shiny lining fabric shifted and moved like crazy, and because everything was without seam allowance, I used chalk to mark the sewing lines. This chalk kind of stayed on the shifty shiny stuff, but dusted straight off the black wool cashmere, so I had to "trace" the lines by hand sewing guide lines over them. 

When I started sewing, things were going smoothly on the wool cashmere, but went quickly downhill on the shiny lining fabric. It was so shifty it was a nightmare to sew, and then the edges started fraying like crazy, no matter what I did. I ended up cutting strips of interfacing and ironing them on to keep the edges in place, which covered up almost all of my chalk sewing lines and then when I went to sew it together with the outer fabric, it was so shifty that I had to hand baste the entire thing in before machine sewing it together. 

SO MUCH EXTRA WORK!!!

I was cursing the cape by this point, for the silly shiny shifty lining fabric, but also because I was on such a time crunch, because I'd left the sewing of it to a week before the first wedding. Never again will I buy shiny lining fabric. Cotton lining is much simpler to work with and will be my preference from here on out. 

At last, however, I had a cape. A swishy, warm fabulous cape. And let me tell you, it was indeed fabulous to wear. 

I don't have any great photos of the cape from the wedding in Sydney, but I was so thankful for the warmth that night. Sydney was a little bit like a test run to see if it really was ok to wear out in public, and it was! Hooray! So the next week, I wore this cape very proudly to my sister's wedding in Brisbane. 

Feeling so fantastic. 

I also added a small welt pocket in the lining of the wrap section so that I would have somewhere to put my phone and keys. So sneaky. Such a perk of sewing your own cape. Sorry I have no photos to show you. But it is awesome. Trust me.