18th Century Cloak

Yesterday my friend Sarah came over, bringing several yards of plaid wool fabric for a cloak.  She didn't have time to help me sew it, so she drew a diagram of the general shape of the pieces.  More or less, it's one panel of fabric however long you want the cloak to be, plus two quarter-circles of a radius the same length sewn on each side of the panel.  The hood is a rectangle with a corner cut off or rounded.  Pleats are on the back of the hood. The back panel is cut in a slight curve (very slight) and then pleated to match the bottom of the hood and then sewn to the hood.

I lined the hood with flannel and hope to eventually line the entire cloak.  For pleats, I did knife pleats.  I am going to get a nice clasp to close the front, but until then, I'm using a straight pin to fasten it, and may just put ties from the same fabric on.  And the best part is that it only took one afternoon to sew the whole thing! Here's a few pictures of the finished product:

The back of the cloak

Showing off the hood and lining.

As you can see, I was wearing jeans in these pictures, and the cloak looks really cute with them!  I think I'm going to wear it proudly to college this fall!