Capes - Tumblr Posts
Will humanity ever be free of the influence of Edna Mode? Can any of us so much as consider the character design for a hero or villain without her manifesting in the room, fully aware of our sins?
Sol Amaril, a RWBY OC, aesthetic
any advice on making capes?
Ooh, I love capes!
Making capes
Types of capes:
There are different types of capes. Let's take a look at a few options.
Rectangle cape: the type of cape American superheroes wear. They consist out of a simple rectangle that can be tied or clasped at the neck. Use gathered fabric for extra fullness. This type of cape won't give you a lot of warmth as it will only cover your back.
Quarter circle cape: slightly more flared than a rectangle cape, but will still only cover your back.
Half circle cape: will cover both your back and shoulders and some of your body, which will give you extra warmth. Great for drama!
Fitted half circle cape: similar to a half circle cape, but made out of three separate pieces to fit around your body better. It won't cover you completely, but it will cover your back, shoulders, and more of your body than a normal half circle cape would.
Full circle cape: this cloak will cover your full body and keep you nice and warm.
Savvy sewists will notice these cape types are similar to circle skirts. The idea's basically the same. Instead of making a skirt, you leave your circle open in the front, and cut a hole that fits your neck rather than your waist.
(Image source) [ID: drawing showing five types of coats: rectangle, quarter circle, half circle, half fitted circle, full circle. Text: "Capes and cloaks. www.facebook.com/aliceincosplayland".]
Aside of volume, you can also play around with length. A floor-length cape has a very different effect and function than a cape that reaches your hips, or even a capelet.
(Image source) [ID: a pattern diagram showing four different cape lengths: floor length, hip length, waist length, and a capelet. Text: "6535 Front and back views. Newlook."]
Details like a hood or armholes can make your cape extra comfortable, and you've got a wide range of options when it comes to fasteners, too.
(Image source) [ID: back view of a long gray half circle cape that's been pleated at the shoulders.]
(Image source) [ID: a purple capelet with a hood, frills, cat ears, and lace, tied with a bow at the front. Text: "Gray. Alice and the Pirates."]
(Image source) [ID: a person wearing a brown monogrammed hip-length cape with front pockets and arm slits at the sides.]
(Image source) [ID: a person wearing a long gray hooded cape, standing in a forest and holding a sword.]
Materials:
Before deciding what fabrics to make your cloak or cape out of, ask yourself what you're trying to achieve first.
Warmth, drape, fabric price, comfort, aesthetic, wearing context,... are some examples of things that can influence your decision.
Some examples:
A cosplay cloak has to look good but doesn't necessarily have to be warm. Choose a fabric that's suitable for your character's outfit, but also keep the circumstances in which you plan to wear your outfit in mind. For example, a warm cloak might pose issues if you do a lot of indoor photo shoots, but convention halls can be pretty chilly.
A fashion cloak intended for winter really does need to be warm! Wool, tweed, and velvet are good options.
A cloak intended for historical re-enactment preferably uses period-accurate materials and therefore won't be lined with fabrics like polyester and such. Which fabric to use depends on the period and region you're working in.
Tutorials and patterns:
Here's a few tutorials/patterns to get you started:
Fitted cloak: winterberry cape (Mood)
How to draft your own hooded cape (The Spruce Crafts)
Pleated half circle cape (Gilian Conahan)
Half circle capelet (Buzzfeed)
Long hooded cloak (Fleece Fun)
Full circle capelet (Project Run and Play)
Four ways to make a cape (WikiHow)
Eight types of capes (Sew Guide)
Half circle fashion cape (Indoor Shannon)
21 free cape sewing patterns (Love Sewing)
Hooded cloak with lining (Online Fabric Store)
Conclusion:
Capes and cloaks make for fun sewing projects. They're pretty easy to make: if you know how to draw circles, you know how to draft a cape pattern.
Capes are a versatile garment, and can range from a great last-minute Halloween costume to an every-day winter cloak. Play around with materials, lengths, shapes, design elements, decoration,... to achieve different effects.
And most of all: have fun with it!
I wear the glasses to protect my secret identity. #superhero #capes #jimmyhendrix #batman #pokemon #didntlearnfromincredibles #thisiswhatiweartowork
Imagine Your OTP
Person A: (Pondering to them self) "Hmm. Not all heroes wear capes, yet ironically Person B does."
Person B: “What Dear~”
Person A: “Nothing!”
So you wanna wear a cape?
(God, this new uploading system is balls. It took me forever to arrange them in the right order, because according to Tumblr, despite the pictures being both numbered and uploaded in order, they should just go where-ever they please.)
In this tutorial you’ll be learning to make a basic single-layer cape that attaches from the collarbones. It is patterned as a circle so that it drapes and flows, giving it a lot of body and “flow” when you walk. It has a hand-rolled hem on all sides to give it a clean, finished look without any raw edges.
It works for characters with “trimless” single-coloured capes, such as Superman, Mon-El, or Thor. I will be doing tutorials for trimmed capes or double-layered capes (or capes that have different coloured layers) at a later date, as well as a proper tutorial on collared capes.
What you will need:
Basic sewing equipment (pins, tape measure, scissors, sewing machine)
Sufficient fabric; a half-circle cape will take roughly 120"x60", but ideally you just need a rectangle that is double in length as it is in width. You also want this fabric to be light-medium weight and made of polyester so that it is easier to care for and IRONS WELL. A tiny bit of stretch is alright, but be aware that the more stretch there is, the more your cape will desire to be as close to the ground as possible… and who likes a droopy, sad cape?
An iron and ironing board.
To make things easier, you may also want:
A flexible ruler makes life easier to do the curve of the neckline.
A friend to help play “compass” with you.
If you have the physical constitution of wet paper towel (as I do), you may want to pop an Advil, because you’re going to hemming for fucking hours.
Ready? Here we go.
Spread your fabric out on the nice, clean floor. Fold it in half down the middle so that you have a square. Then fold it diagonally, so that you have a “slice”; the third and fourth pictures demonstrate this, but you basically want to have something that will open up to be one piece. This is going to save you a lot of time pinning the bottom curve of your cape.
Once you have your fabric laid out nicely and the edges lined up beautifully, take your measuring tape and decide how long you need this cape to be. Josh here is 5'7" or so, and we cut the cape to 57.5", this way the finished cape will land just around his ankles from the back of his neck.
Remember compasses? Not the kind you use to save your lost ass from the wilderness and find “North”, the kind you used in sixth grade math class like twice and thought was really cool but had no practical use for. Well, now you get to do something Similar. Line up your measuring tape with that top “point” of your fabric, so it sits nicely in the middle. Have your friend put their finger on it, with enough pressure to keep it from sliding but still leave it room to “swing”. You’re going to use this to draw a large curve across the fabric, using whatever length suits you – if you want to cut a 58" long cape, then use the 58" mark on the measuring tape to pin across. You can see us doing this in picture six.
Finish pinning the whole way across and then cut just below the pins. When you open it up, you have a big ass cape! (Picture seven.) But it doesn’t have a neck curve yet, and you’ll want to add that so it hangs around your neck nicely. Fold it up again in half (don’t worry about the pizza slice this time) and measure your neck to see how wide you want this neckline to be. We picked 20", which means we needed to cut an arc that spanned 10". Now, I’m impatient with math, so I just bent my flexible ruler into a curve and used my measuring tape to make sure it was equal distance away from the corner, but if you’re better at math than I am, you can figure out how many inches you need to “swing” just like you did to cut the bottom of the cape. (A 10" half-circle needs about a 6" swing, for the record.) When you’re done that, cut.
And now you have a cape!
But it’s not finished yet.
If you’re fancy, you may have something called a “rolled hem foot” that lets you do stuff like this easily, but a) I find those things more trouble than they’re worth and b) what am I, a wizard? I’m not fucking around with a foot when I can do it manually. You might be a wizard, though, so if you want to explore this magical sewing foot, you can read someone else’s tutorial here.
But if you’re cool and want to stick with me and learn how to do it manually, that’s cool, too.
Now, if you just folded over the edges once and sewed it down and called it a day, your cape might still be okay. But you don’t want fraying –– that stuff is ugly, and you’ll appreciate the extra work of doing a rolled hem, which is just a fancy way to say “fold that shit over twice.”
Picture 9 shows this pretty clearly, I think –– fold over the edge you want to hem once, iron it, and then fold it over again, so that the ugly raw edge is trapped inside. Pin it all. You’re going to want to pin it very evenly and close together, and TAKE YOUR TIME. If you rush it, you’re going to end up with an ugly, uneven hem, and it’ll bubble up in weird places because you’re hemming a big curve, here. This can be very tedious and take a long time, especially if your cape is huge. (This is why it is usually faster to just make a double-layered cape. UGH, HEMMING.) But the results are worth it; a single-layered cape with beautiful hems is gorgeous and usually less bulky than a double-layered one, so they fly better.
Once you have everything pinned (taking care to pin down the corners neatly, too) you can sew it all. Take your time and make sure the fabric is tight/flat when you sew over it, lest you end up with weird bubbles and misplaced hems. Stay close to the edge of the hem, so that you don’t end up with overhang.
Speed will only sabotage you.
Once you’re done sewing it all down, take out any remaining pins and give the whole thing a good ironing. This should smooth out any remaining warps in your fabric, as you’re using a polyester and they can be warped back into line a little with some heat.
And then enjoy your cape. You earned it.
Go race some airplanes.
Zuhair Murad | Fall/Winter 2018 Couture
Will humanity ever be free of the influence of Edna Mode? Can any of us so much as consider the character design for a hero or villain without her manifesting in the room, fully aware of our sins?
I want to see borrowers in super hero settings. Like oh not only are you stressed from moving into a new humans house but turns out you decided to hole in the house of a freaking SUPERVILLAIN. Like good luck little buddy, yikes.
Imagine you're a borrower and you discover the human you're staying with has plans to destroy the city. Like you've GOT to go to someone about it surely but holy shit you have to go get a humans attention about this. Terrifying.
Another Sneek peak of @jovi_157 's Halloween costume!! Crushed penned cape. Made to match his custom made undies! Wonder what his costume is? If you care to make guesses please do!! *** #Denveroddd #denverodddunderwear #custom #fashion #fagtagulous #instagay #instagays #funky #sexy #sexyboys #twinks #halloween #capes #cloke #black (at Denver ODDD) https://www.instagram.com/p/BpP9NXEgc9r/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1j96zub9vvj9l
Will humanity ever be free of the influence of Edna Mode? Can any of us so much as consider the character design for a hero or villain without her manifesting in the room, fully aware of our sins?
Capes...
I feel like making some capes...
I think I'll start out with making a couple (maybe more) of cute little capes for kids. Mainly, inspired by the fact that one of my high school buddies (haven't really been in contact with her since H.S.) has a daughter and another friend wants to have a child.
Besides that, I've always had a love for capes (and trench coats).
I think I'll try to add hoods to the capes... Hmm...
I'll post some photos of the finished work(s). Perhaps, even some of the process...
thinking about capes. i want a cape. any cape suggestions?