Laurel Cloak (March-April 2021)

Introduction

A very lovely lady, and a friend of mine, received her writ to the Laurel. For those who don't know, that is the highest Arts award you can get in the SCA. Typically, there is regalia associated with it, including some sort of "cloak" with laurel leaves on it; I requested to make this regalia for her. Speaking to her (and her laurel), I knew that she wanted something relatively simple, that could work with a variety of periods, and be somewhat warm. She liked the general look of her laurels' cloak, which was just a hip length cloak with no collar and a laurel wreath around the bottom, so I chose to loosely copy that idea. I had scraps left over from the Houppelande I made of a lovely brushed green wool (seriously, I love that fabric). I thought it would just barely be enough fabric to make a small cloak (I was technically correct, though would have preferred something slightly fuller). I also had yellow wool scraps from a hood I made for the laurel wreath. The lining is made of left over silk from another friend's elevation cloak, so it really is made with a lot of love and history.

Construction

As mentioned, I was literally working with scraps here. I took a quick measurement from my body from where I would want a neckline to me to my wrist bone, and used that as a basic guideline for size. Luckily I am actually pretty good with spatial recognition, so I was able to kinda... picture the best general layout for pieces. I didn't take pictures of this part, but I essentially guessed on a few different layouts of how I might use the most fabric, and then went with what worked best. I ended up with pieces... 2 were the same size, one was smaller, and one was quite large. In order to make a balanced pattern, I figured a 5 piece assembly would work best. First, I cut the large piece into 2 equal pieces to get to 5 pieces... I then used the 2 pieces that were originally the same size as the front pieces, the divided larger pieces as the sides, and the smaller piece as the center back. I quickly sewed these all together to make about 2/3 of a circle.

Next was the laurel wreath. I free formed a leaf, and used it as a template for cutting out even more, for a total of 30 leaves. The stems are just straight cuts the width of the fabric. I pinned the leaves and stems down, slightly curving the wool as I went.

My friend's laurel is for gold work, so I needed to add a little bling. The original plan was to couch gold thread down around the yellow wool, but the gold I had really was too thin for that, and it didn't look right, even doubled. This is largely due to how thick the yellow wool was, and just how bright it is. So, I took another approach. I had some 100% wool yarn that just happened to match the wool fabric pretty well. I also had some very thin gold metallic Japan thread. So, a new plan was born!

In order to get as much shine as possible, I used a rather large whip stitch to couch the wool thread down. Usually you want to hide the thread you are using to hold down the couched thread, but I just had to be different. So... thats what I did. And you know what? Sewing with metal thread SUCKS. It kept tangling, and I had to draw it through the fabric very slowly so as not to get kinks in it. As a result, each leaf took me close to an hour to couch down. Either way... slow and steady. It eventually got done.

For the lining, I was amazingly able to fit the cloak onto the scrap nearly perfectly. I had to incorporate the selvages, but that wasn't worth adding a seam. After carefully laying it out, I cut around it leaving a small seam allowance.

I pinned right side to right side all the way around (in that picture you can see the negative outline of my couching, and where I had to pull the yarn through to the back). I was running short on time, so I machine stitched around the outer hem, and the front edges. I then turned the whole thing right-side-out through the neck hole. At this point I also turned the neckline in to hide the raw edges, and whip stitched it closed with silk thread. I flattened the turned seams out for a proper crease, and pinned everything down. To keep the "fold" from migrating, I did a hand running stitch around the entire outer edge with the same silk thread used just previously. Finally, I sewed in a hand made brass hook and eye for a simple closure.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I am happy with how things turned out. Pieces migrated while sewing so things are no longer perfectly centered or symmetrical, but it is what it is. Most people will likely not notice, and honestly, branches are probably not completely symmetrical in nature either. The way this is constructed, it is 100% fully reversible, which is a feature I love. The gold silk fabric is just so extra. The running stitch to hold the edges in the proper place gives it a nice hand finished look you can really only see from the gold side. Hopefully my friend loves this as much as I do... Though I have to say, I don't think I will make another one of these any time in the near future, lol. It was likely 40-50 hours of work... which is more than I originally expected. But she's worth it.