A darling cape for the darling Miss J.

In my last post I talked about this startling piece of  fabric I bought. Well this is what I made with it:

I made this for a challenge from the Designer III group I belong to. The challenge was to use either a plaid or striped fabric and match the pattern. To see what the other ladies made, go on over to the Designer III blog.

I'm really not much of a gut grinder, but I was really at a loss for what to make at first. I didn't have a plan, a pattern or any suitable  fabric. I was almost ready to use my usual fallback position, which  is: make a skirt. 

So I went shopping for fabric at the nice fabric store in my area (Haberman's) and got this fabric. I really wasn't crazy about it. So I over dyed it with regular old Rit dye. I liked it better, but I still didn't know what to make with it. Then *Ding* I thought: a cape! The stripes would do that cool chevron thing like a skirt, it would be almost as easy as a skirt, but it wouldn't be as lazy as me making another skirt.

I used New Look 6227 for the pattern and its pretty easy, as you can imagine. It's all bias. The only change I made to the was to let the lining hang free instead of bagging it, due to a recent bad experience I had. Originally, I had planned to make the button tabs and epaulletes in leather, but it just didn't look right to me so I used the arrow motifs from the fabric. I did buy a walking foot just for this project and it really was a huge help matching the stripes. 

Although I started making this for myself, it really suits Miss J much better and its her's now. I have to get her to model it.