Accessorizing for Williamsburg: The Do-It-Again-George Cape-Mantle-Thing

Of course, my cape looks nothing like this…

I’m off and running on my Williamsburg accessories. Feeling good about the muff, I jumped into making a cloak…something simple, easy, quick, right?

Uh, no.

I followed the diagrams in “Costume Close-Up
,” except that I didn’t. I had a remnant of blue wool melton in my stash, which approximated wool broadcloth quite nicely, so I endeavored to make a simple round cloak, about hip-length, with unfinished hem and hand slits, like the original. I planned to line the hood in soft pink silk, like the original, and tie on a big fluffy vintage fur collar I bought from Maggie last Summer. In my mind, mine would look something like a shorter, furry, blue version of this:

The Met, last 3rd of the 18th c.

Simple, right?

Well instead of using my brain, I just started hacking away at the wool. When I should have cut the cloak circular, or almost circular (because of its size), I had some weird half-circle that put the seams in a strange place. My pocket slits weren’t in the right place either, so I stitched them back together, and ended up cutting the cloak into a mantle shape, to accommodate the arms.

The cape cut into a mantle shape – you can see the seams here. I later change the tucking on the neckline.

My hood came out too small, and the pleats on the back were crap, so I deconstructed it, pieced in some more wool (luckily that’s period correct), but then didn’t have enough pretty pink silk to line it. By that time I’d decided the whole cape needed lining, so I cut into an old ivory taffeta petticoat.

Of course, then it all looked too plain, so I endeavored to find some fur for trimming that would match the blonde fox collar. The thrift store delivered, with an outdated jacket lined entirely in ivory faux fur that was actually pretty decent.  When I got it home I realize that the fox collar was quite a bit darker than the faux fur I’d picked up, so I spent an evening learning all about how to color faux fur.

Bottom Right is the original faux fur. Top Middle is the real fur collar – you can see how red it is. Bottom Left is my result from spraying with the alcohol/acrylic solution.

At least THIS part of the project was a success – I used To The Wig Shop!‘s tutorial for staining synthetic hair wigs. I mixed acrylic ink (and some acrylic paint, when the color wasn’t quite right) into rubbing alcohol, sprayed it on the fur, rubbed it with my gloved hands, and let it dry. I didn’t rinse it out, as my application was very light and topical. So far no paint/dye has come off on my skin or clothes, when working with the fur.  It didn’t turn out an *exact* match – the real fur has a lot of red in it – but it was a close enough approximation for me to be happy.

Some more battling and fiddling and doing things twice – gathering/tucking/pleating the neck, the ties, the loops on the fox collar – and I’m done, over it, and it’s actually quite nice. Here’s the result:

It’s not very drapey, but it’ll be warm. With the big collar on it, I feel kindof like Ned Stark

The keep the fur collar in place, and make it removable, I added thread loops on the edges of the underside, and threaded the cape’s ties through.

The pleats on the hood took some fiddling – I used a cartridge pleat technique to create them – basically a big gathering stitch. Worked a treat.

The hood is still not huge. It won’t go over a monstrous hairstyle, but it’ll do nicely over a daytime coif and a cap.

Next time I make a cloak, I’ll be much more prepared! What I am *very* happy about is that this was almost entirely made from stash fabrics. The only thing I bought for it was the faux fur trim – the jacket was about $16.00, and I have loads of faux fur left. If I count the ink and alcohol mixture, too, the total for this project came to about $24.00. Yay stashbusting!