Cloaking Device: Me

Yesterday, my wife and i went to a friend's house to help her with her Halloween costume. She's going to be Darth Revan, as I'm sure I mentioned previously. Yesterday we got her on her way with a cloak. We were on a bit of a budget and had some pretty serious time constraints, so we went with the best fabric we could find at the local fabric store (aka Wal-Mart). It was a 45" wide black flannel. It's actually a nice fabric, it has a good weight and texture to it. I was really hoping for 60" fabric to make the whole thing easier, but that was not to be.

So, for those of you who are unfamiliar, there are several styles of cloak. You can do a yoke which is basically a simple shoulder piece with the cloak fabric hung from it. This is pretty simple and can use less fabric than other methods, but you don't get the same fullness as with other methods. You can do a half circle cloak. That's basically a half circle of fabric with a bit of a neck hole in it. This isn't a bad way to go, as it saves a lot of fabric and can actually be done almost without sewing at all. You still suffer from a lack of fullness, and I've had trouble getting them to sit on my shoulders properly. A three-quarters or full-circle cloak are the gold standard of cloakdom. Full circle gets more fullness and uses more fabric, but it's nearly indistinguishable from a well-made 3/4 cloak. I prefer 3/4 just because there's a significant cost and weight savings without much loss of fullness. Here's a diagram of what each of the styles looks like when laid flat (except the yoke style, because that one doesn't really lay flat very well).



You can see there is a distinct increase in the amount of fabric used each step up you take. The pattern used can be very simple, like this:



That's just two pieces with a seam down the back. You'll have to hem and everything, but just one seam isn't bad. This requires that you have fabric wide enough to make the cloak as long as you want it. 60" fabric would be enough for almost anyone.

If you don't have fabric that wide, you'll need to do wedges. The number and size of wedges will be determined by how long it needs to be and how wide your fabric is. This is why I don't have dimensions marked on my diagrams. Essentially, the distance from the center of the circle to the edge is the length of the cloak. The width of each panel is a function of how long the panel is and how much of the arc you can fill with the width of your fabric. Here's a picture of the panel method:



You can see with this pattern that by increasing or decreasing the number of panels, you can essentially create a cloak of any length with any width of fabric. It is much more time consuming and you end up with seams, but it is a perfectly acceptable option if you have fabric limitations or excessive height.

This is the method we used for our friend's cloak and she loved it. I slapped a hood on it, and it looked pretty darned good. It's even big enough that I figure she can wear it for a couple of years. If she gets much taller it'll become more of a mid-calf thing instead of a floor-length thing, but I don't picture her putting on much more height. We'll see, of course. So anyhow, that's about all there is to cloaks. Maybe I'll decide to draw a rough picture of the hood shape I like, but not today. I'll see if I can get some pics of the cloak at the Halloween party.