[For Villains Only] How to Sew a Cloak

If you, as a villain, happen to be one of those unfortunate villains that is not supplied with a cloak, you poor thing. Pull out your sewing machine because I’m about to help you out.

[**Note to self: why am I helping villains?????]

Anyway.

So, to begin with. Cloaks are very useful. Besides the fact that they swish cool when you walk fast or turn corners and make you look very sophisticated as long as you get the hoods on right, cloaks can be useful for disguise, blending in to dark corners or forests, making you look taller than you really are, hiding your face from your mortal enemy, or even keeping you warm when you find it necessary to carry out assassinations in the dead of winter. All that being said, if you don’t have a cloak, you’re in trouble.

Best way to remedy that problem: sew yourself a cloak. Although I don’t know it for sure and certain, rumor has it that the best stores for buying cloaks refuse to sell to anyone with a shady character. Besides that, it might be best not to let anyone know that you’re in need of a cloak, because they might think you’re up to something. First thing you’ll need: a sewing machine and fabric. Any kind of fabric will work, really. You just need a fair bit. Hint: go for something other people have cast out. Usually drapery fabric or something like that hangs nicely and can be found in a dark color, but most people don’t have a clue what to do with it so they’re quite willing for you to use it.

Find a coat with a hood that fits. It’s best for the hood to be a bit big so it can cover your face. After all, what’s the point of a hood if everyone can still tell it’s you?

Fold your fabric in half. Flatten your hood out from the seam at the back of the head and lay it out on the fabric so that you can cut out two half-hoods at the same time. Find some sharp scissors and cut around the hood. You can leave about ¼-½ inch extra seam allowance around (plus it helps you not cut your coat). [Note: although daggers may be useful for many operations, scissors work best for sewing cloaks.]

Take your fabric and cut to straighten the edge where you’ve just cut out your hood so that you have a large rectangle or square. It doesn’t matter which.

Sew the seam on the rounded/back side of the hood so that it looks like a hood and not like two weirdly-shaped pieces of fabric. ¼ inch seam allowance works great.

Then hem the edge close to your face. I mean, you could leave it to fray, but your hood might end up being too short to conceal your features.

Hold up your fabric square/rectangle and put it around your shoulders. Decide which way you want it to go (if it’s a rectangle, do you want it to be longer or do you want it shorter with more fabric around your shoulders?). Gather the top edge at ¼ inch, more or less, until it’s the same size as the bottom of the hood.

Oh, and a note. One cool thing about a lot of drapery/upholstery fabric is that it doesn’t fray. At all. So you hem the edge of the hood just to give it a finished look, but you can leave the rest of the edges unhemmed. Unless your fabric frays. In that case, hem. No questions. Selvages work great to save from hemming at least two edges. And who cares anyway? I mean, if you’re trying to hide from someone and so need a cloak, it’s not like anyone’s going to be looking too closely at your seam finishes.

Anyway. Take your gathered edge (I hope you remembered to find the middle first? I almost didn’t.) and pin it to the bottom of the hood. Make sure that your seams end up being on the inside. It hangs more nicely and is easier to put on. Sew along the bottom of the hood/top of the cape at ½ inch seam allowance.

There, you’re done!

Now, normally I would say to go show it off, but in this case, you probably don’t want to. Unless, of course, you belong to some organization of villains like that VIPOR I’ve heard about. That would be ok. Unless you’re trying to hide from them…Anyway, you can figure it out. Hope your cloak making goes well. You could always make a white one for the winter, if you live where there’s snow, and a brown one for fall, and a black one for nights, and the possibilities are endless.

Signed,

Zurishaddai ben Kadmiel