The Cape Project

I had 4 days off for Thanksgiving and for the first time ever, I was not going to be with my children. Cliff has remarried and they invited the boys to dinner at their home. This meant we wouldn't be driving to San Jose that weekend and I would have 4 whole days to do whatever I wanted.

In May, Julie came to visit me and we went shopping in consignment stores. I found a beautiful gown to wear to the ball and have always wanted a velvet cape to wear over my gowns. Since a cape is not fitted and is mostly just long seams, I felt I could make one. So in June, I found a pattern and bought the material.

David and I were going to the No Snow Ball on Dec. 3rd. So having these days off made it the perfect time to make the cape. It would be done just in time for the dance.

It wasn't hard, but I made lots of mistakes. In the end, I bought enough velvet to made 1 and 3/4 capes and enough lining material to make 1 and 1/2 linings.

The first purchase of velvet was 12" too short for the pattern. This was NOT my mistake. So I went and bought more material. This was Friday after Thanksgiving. I NEVER go even near stores on that day, but here I was in a fabric store and guessing by the crowds they were giving away material. The place was packed.

I felt really lucky because they had the exact velvet I had bought in June. I got the fabric and pulled a cutting table number. It was 57 and they were serving 21. I thought, well that's not too bad and THEN I found out that they were serving C-21 and my number was D-57. OMG really!!! There were women in there with 30 and 40 bolts of material in their baskets. I sat down on the floor and thought long and hard about how much I wanted a cape and is the wait worth it. I had been there about 50 minutes and they were at D-8 when right in front of me a manager went behind the cutting tables and said, I'll take any one with one item. I jumped up and said that's me!! I had to wait about 10 minutes to check out. But after the other wait, that seemed quick. LOL

The pattern showed cutting the pieces with the fabric folded. But the pattern was too long and full to fit on half the fabric, so each piece (2 fronts and 2 backs) had to be cut separately. I didn't know or have enough experience to even understand that when you do that, you MUST flip the pattern over when cutting the second piece. It's a DUH! to me now. But it just didn't even occur to me. So it was off to the store again to purchase velvet and lining material. This time the wait at the cutting table was only 15 minutes.

I felt very very lucky because the store had both my velvet and lining fabric in the store. And each time (3 in total) I had to buy the velvet, thanks to my Joanns App, I had a 50% off coupon.

I finally got the pieces cut correctly and felt pretty good about things. But my lessons were not over. I did all the long seams (8 total) for the velvet and the lining and then discovered I had assembled the panels incorrectly. I was so mad at myself. This was just a stupid mistake. I had to pick out ALL the seams. That took hours. Thank goodness for Audible books.

I finished the cape late afternoon on Sunday and didn't have the time, skill, or energy to hem it. So I took it to the cleaners to have it hemmed (wish I'd had a 50% off coupon for that LOL).

But it is really beautiful. And I did learned a great deal.

Take a look.









The gown was very nice too!


And then there's my partner. --Divine --