A green cape!

I have been thinking, and blogging, about capes before. Last year, I even started drafting and making muslins but I could never quite get it to work, even just in my mind's eye.
Now, as I was folding the fabric of my latest haul onto the already overflowing shelf, I thought that bright green boiled wool would be perfect for a simple, not too full, cape. My thoughts quickly turned to a half circle shape with some kind of shaping at the shoulder. At first I thought I'd make it really simple, but this is the idea I put on paper:

Half circle cape, shoulder yoke which is rounded at the back and angles towards the opening at the front, simple convertible collar.

And this is what I made: Just that, in that wonderfully bright green boiled wool. Using the properties of the material, I left the bottom edge raw and didn't apply the facings in the usual way but rather just placed the outside on top of the facing and topstitched at 0.5 cm from the cut edges. I sewed on snaps for the closure. 
The cape was finished last Tuesday, but today E and I were walking outside and he agreed to take some pictures, which I think is much better than my usual self timer stuff. 

In this kind of wheather, nice but not necessarily really warm, it's a pretty ideal cover-up. And I think I could even ride my bicycle wearing it.
Another thing I like (but unfortunately forgot to try and take a picture of, but it may have been too windy anyway) is that, with the shaped yoke, the cape actually stays in place when worn open which makes it look a little like a jacket.

We took these pictures at the Dagelijkse Groenmarkt (literally translated "daily vegetable market", so I guess it was just that at some time, but in my memory there has never been a market there), the square around The Hague's Grote Kerk (Big Church), which casts the long shadow you see in the first three pictures. The structure behind me is the old town hall, a beautiful 16th and 18th century building which is now only used for weddings (information about it is here, unfortunately, it's only in Dutch).
Oh, and worry about my posing on the tram tracks. That particular route is not in use.

Cape muslin

Like many of you suggested, I decided to go with the short cape with sleeves. But, since this little book is new to me and I still wasn't entirely sure about the look, I decided to make a muslin first.

First of all, the instructions in the book are decidedly sketchy. Of course, I don't have the slopers it used to come with, but still...

It doesn't mention how deep the cut between sleeve and body should be, or at what angle to the straight grain or what distance to the original under-arm point it should be made. Either of which would have been very helpful to get the right placement. It only tells you that the sleeve hem is 21 cm wide on each pattern piece... And it does mention shoulder/sleeve length but not the length of the body of the cape.

If my theory is correct and this method of pattern buying/making never really took off, they didn't just have affordable patterns from the likes of Marion to blame for it...

Also, the text about what looks, at first glance like sleeves is not entirely clear either. They mention a slit between body and sleeve but don't really go on about the sleeves themselves.

And on closer inspection of the pictures, I noticed this:

Edges at those 'sleeve-slits'. Do they mean they're not sewn together? Or only at the very tip? That sort of defeats the purpose of including something sleeve-like, doesn't it?

I did stitch the slits on my muslin as sleeves. On one side, I also added a sort of underarm gore: a strip of fabric 5 cm wide between the front and back of the cape. At the other side, I just sewed front and back together.

Even when posing like the lady in the drawing, I fortunately don't look like I don't have shoulders at all.

The fabric I used for the muslin is a bit stiff, so I expect the cape to drape more gently when made up in an actual fashion fabric.

Oh, and the fabric tends to stick to the fabric of my jumpsuit, which makes the 'normal view particularly un-appealing.

In these pictures from the side, you can more or less see what I'm talking about with that underarm gore. Basically, it allows that half-sleeve thing to function like a real sleeve.

with:

without:

I'm still not sure about this thing though. It is more like a little jacket than like a cape and I don't know about its dimensions. It might be better if I made it a little longer...

Cover up

Can I ask you something?

What do you think of capes?

I'm having some trouble deciding what to make this week. Dutch spring weather is unreliable at the best of times. We've had some nice days but today, it was gray and cold-ish once more... And there's no telling what next week or even next month will be like. Of course, I don't have to be able to wear anything I make straight away, but still, I like to.

It made me think I could use another light jacket for the slightly warmer in-between weather. So far, I have a tweed blazer and the leather and wool jacket I made last year. Those are both fitted, so I'd like a different kind of shape. Which brings me to the question posed above...

Mind you, I have owned a cape before. It was black, almost floor length and made of crushed velvet. In my goth days, I loved it but now, I'm thinking about something different altogether.

A cute little one, in colour. More like something Joan or Peggy would wear.

And, luckily, I recently bought this:

This is booklet number 5 (I found 1 through 6) of an 'easy drafting' series from the 1960's. The fact that they're numbered suggests that no. 1 really was the first issue and 'everything so far' is listed in no. 6 which sort of suggests that this was a short-lived experiment. The subscribtion used to come with a set of sized slopers which, obviously, wasn't sold alongside these booklets (I saw a set of sized slopers for sale recently but those were from a later date and produced by a different company. So, I didn't think they'd be a match and didn't bid). That is a shame but I think I can work around that and just use my own slopers.

In booklet no.5 there's this darling little cape:

I'm thinking about making a hybrid of the versions shown: I rather like the wide neckline but would prefer my buttons at the front. I could use that warmly coloured plaid wool I bought recently...

Or, I could look one page further, at this very cute cape/jacket cross-over:

I'm not sure about those pockets but having sleeves, no matter how short and wide, could make this a little more practical.

I guess there are two real questions here:

1. No matter how cute or period-accurate these two capes are, aren't they just a bit too costume-y for 2012?

And 2. Are capes ever any use in real life? I know they won't exactly keep me warm while cycling, but in order to be any good to me, they'd at least have to do a half-way decent job when I'm walking around outside.

Oh, and a non-official question no. 3: which one do you like best?