The Confident Journal: Hobbit Cloak...or How to Make a Birthday Present for Your Type 2 Sister

If you know anything about "Dressing Your Truth" types (which you can learn about here), you will know that Type 2's are intensely sentimental. I don't mean that in a wishy-washy way, I mean that they have intense emotional connections to people, the past, the future, animals, points-of-view, etc. far more than the other types. My sister is such a person. Therefore, for her birthday I decided to hand make her a hobbit cloak because I knew it would remind her of when we were kids.

I found this awesome elvish/hobbit material at a thrift store which is where I got the initial idea for my sister's birthday. I looked up "hobbit cloak" blogs and found this really good one, but. . .you know me. I can't follow the rules entirely.

Up close you can really see how perfect it is. It looks like the same exact material as in the movies.

I wasn't going to be able to make a long cloak because the fabric was less than 2 yards long and a lot of that would be for making the droopy hood. I measured out 1 yard and decided that that's how long the cloak part would be. I used my cutting method that I've used before when making napkins. Simply cut a small cut where your measurement is, then move the tape measure up, and then cut from your first incision up to the tape measure. Keep doing that till you get to the end, and you are sure to have a straight line.

I set the cloak part aside and folded the remainder in half. I figured out that I wanted the hood to be 36" around the face to make it extra drapey, so I measured out 18" (half of 36") and cut up to the fold.

Here is the 18" part cut off.

Next I figured I wanted the part around the neck to be 22", so I measured out 11" (half of 22") and cut.

Here is a close up of the cut.

Then, I just connected the end of the "neck" cut to the point of the top of the hood and used my tape measure as a straight edge. This side of the hood will be the part that lies against the back from the nape of the neck down the back.

Here is the cut hood.

Then, in keeping with the elvish look, I used gold thread.

Here is the part I sewed.

Then, I folded the cloak part in half.

I took a flexible tape measure and measured a curve of 11" in a folded corner.

Then, holding the tape measure in place, I quickly followed the tape measure's curve with my scissors. This is a very unorthodox way of doing this, I realize, but it's super quick and it works!

This is the neck hole.

Before I opened the cloak up, I put a pin right in the top of the fold. After opening the cloak part up, I matched the back of the hood with the pin. You can see me pointing at the pin in this picture.

I first pinned the middle in place and then pinned the edges of the hood to the edges of the cloak. Then I filled in the rest of the length with other pins. This assured that I wouldn't run out of fabric on either side.

After sewing the hood in place, I folded the cloak in half again, eyeballed a curve, and cut the corners off.

Here is the finished cloak. (Incidentally, I got that dress from "Twice." To get a free dress, top, or bottom go here and sign up for $10. Then, download the Twice app to your iPad or iPhone for another $10. Then, go here to find a coupon and you can usually get an additional 15% off!)