2026-01-31 Bardic! Daniel brought a large piece of a nice thick green wool that he wanted help transforming into a cloak. I had him try on the Norrskensbard Mantel, to see if that style would suit. His shoulders are so broad we decided that his cloak would need to be a little wider, and slightly shaped over the shoulders.
So first I traced the left half of the Norrskensbard Mantel onto his fabric, then slid it nine centimeters to the side, and traced it again, to get an approximate shape for the cloak. (His fabric piece was pretty much exactly large enough for this.) then I cut out the curve of the neckline and put the cloak onto Daniel to fit it over his shoulders, by pinching triangles on each side of the neck.
Then I marked the hem around the bottom of the cloak all the way around at 25 cm above the floor. The result of which was often similar to the traced version I marked at first. The biggest difference is the back centre no longer reaches that close to the ground after doing the shoulder shaping. Therefore, after trimming the bottom hem we used the fabric we had removed to create some piecing to fill out that bottom bit.
Then he took the project home. He will need to do the rest of it on his own:
- Finish sewing the pieced bits to the bottom of the cloak.
- Mark the “sew here” lines along where the pins sit at the shoulders and remove the pins. cut away the triangles between those lines, leaving a reasonable seam allowance
- Obtain a suitable lining fabric
- If the lining fabric is big enough, trace the cloak onto it (if not, first sew pieces together to make it large enough)
- Cut the lining fabric.
- Sew shut the slits at the shoulders on both the lining and the wool.
- lay the cloak and lining together, right sides together, and sew their edges together along the front edges and the bottom hem, then turn it right side out.
- Turn the edges of the fabric along the neck line in, and shew it shut too.
- Choose an appropriate embroidery yarn with which to sew (with an outline stitch, or perhaps stem stitch) around the outside of the cloak to hold the layers together, create a nice border about 7 to 12 cm from the edge, and to ensure that the seam between the lining and the wool is aligned precisely at the cloak’s edge.
- If further decoration is desired, add it
- Add some sort of clasp.