The Greatest Cape

Once upon a time, a long time ago (in 2005, to be precise), there was a woman who wanted a cape. She wanted a cape so very badly because she was living in Sydney and catching the bus to work each day and in winter she alternately froze and stifled, because bus stations are environments set up for buses, which are big and need a lot of space for the wind to whistle through. And buses are environments set up for bus drivers, who like to work in a shirt.Because anything more would be binding and maybe hide their 36 pack.

And she would sit on the stifling bus, fantasising about her perfect cape made up in a purple tweed fabric she had bought at the Vic Markets in Melbourne in the days when there was good fabric to be had there if you looked (Twenty + years ago).

So did she make the cape? Hell no because it seemed too hard because she didn't have a pattern. It seemed harder than alternatingly stifling and freezing.

Cut to 2009 and the same woman was living in Canberra, still with her untouched, folded purple tweed and she had discovered burda and an endless supply of patterns, including cape patterns! And she was walking or riding to work so a cape would have been quite useful. So did she make up one of the burda patterns, say …............. or …..............? Hell no, because, because.... ok I don't know why because.

Er -Fremantle....sack of potatoes?

Move forward to 2010 and she took her courage and equipment in both hands and set to work. And produced this (unfinished) object.

It transpires that double breasted, on a woman above a b cup, by the power of the immutable law of squares and cubes in modeling, becomes quadruple breasted. Or more. Which is just too many breasts for anyone, really.

So that attempt went into the box of shame, to be send to the bag of shame for probable burying under a tree at midnight.

Goodbye, purple fabric of youth.

Darth Vader's Summer Uniform

But undaunted, she tried again with another Burda pattern and some wool flannel from the opshop and produced this...

Which put her off the whole idea for a couple of years. Years when she could have been terrorising the galaxy. Years of riding to work when a cape would have been really useful, as well as fashion forward.

But then finally, her disgraceful opshop overcoat, affectionately known as “the horserug”, died the death and she really really needed something to wear for the looming winter. So, in her hour of need she recalled the diagram in her original pattern drafting book which started her whole cape fascination in about 1982. “It can't be that hard”, she thought, “to draft my own.”

So she took a previously used burda overshirt pattern, and lo, it was not that hard to draft her own.



And here it is. The greatest cape. Soft, warm, with pocketss(if somewhat let down by dodgy handstitching).  Made with the pride of someone's stash (via St V de P), a woollen fabric by "Jacqmar" so refined and obliging that it virtually ironed its own seams.  Thank you, mystery stash hoarder.

And this fabric would have cost a bomb back in the day.  I showed my mother the seal (which was on the selvage - yes, there was a little seal hanging from the selvage), and she in turn showed me the  Chanel-styled suit her mother made for her as a going away outfit in 1963, with the same name  woven into the selvage. Of the 50 guineas a yard fabric that made up that suit.  (my grandmother refused to waste her time on "junk" but that's a story for another day)  

OK, so  the look is a little Nanny and the Professor, but is that a bad thing? I think not. After all, didn't those stories all have a happy ending?