Making Some CLOAKS (frolicking included)

I have a cloak that I found at the thrift for $8. It's full length for me and I'm 5'8. The entire back, hood, and edges are hand embroidered with flowers. It's one of my most prized possessions.

My son is autistic, and when he was 4 he refused to wear a coat because he hated long sleeves. So I bought a cloak for him off of Etsy. When we went out shopping, a guy complimented his cloak and said he hoped we start a trend and bring cloaks back. I hope this video starts the trend that we couldn’t 6 years ago!

As a writer I just wanted to say your channel is a god send, especially since I’m a guy who’s never know any term besides pants (the bottom part) and top or t shirt (the top one, pretty self explanatory). Now I can utterly confuse all my readers describing and detailing parts of clothes I didn’t know existed. cackles in author

I just wanna tell anyone who wants a cloak: you can make a historically accurate cloak with just a blanket. Many cloaks were not specifically sown to be cloaks, but rather a halfcircle, a square, or a rectangle that you put in a certain configuration using a simple pin.

Pro-tip to stop your cloak from weighing on your neck: attach long, heavy-duty strings where you fasten it, then cross those strings over your chest, bring the ends around under your arms and tie them behind your back. Puts all the weight on your chest and shoulders and keeps it in place. Also keeps it closed better. ;) This has been your Renn Fair Advice.

I worked for this elderly lady as a carer and one day she asks me to hand her the cloak and I was confused and laughed and I said you have a cloak? And she shuffled to her wardrobe and showed me this midnight blue cloak that she use to wear when she wore to dances when she was younger during the war and it made me want to bring it back into fashion.

For over 15 years I was a 16th. cent. Highland Scots re-enactor...one of the first things I really loved about our clothing was our ability to "vanish" in nearly any setting short of extremely modern public parks. There's a few bushes? Bye. Reeds on the bank of the pond? Gone. Natural hillside with a few trees and dried grasses? The trick was learning how to take the tail of a pleated great kilt and pulling it up over our shoulders like a cloak...suddenly even "Technicolor" plaids allowed us to simply disappear like we were wearing modern military camouflage...even more so if we were rocking a plaid with already muted colors like greens and browns. Actually give me a simple grey cloak, a half-circle of wool made from two old military-style blankets? Even with a simple yarn collar and I could suddenly go from "invisibly" napping next to a tree or by a log to suddenly standing there like Ned Stark in a "Winter is Coming" meme.

current goal: clear an area to sew a cloak in, and sew it by the time weather requires layers. to school ? yes, they deserve to see my cloak. the grocery store ? yes, the public needs to know. around the house ? yes, i will flare it around me while i play minecraft and it will be amazing.

When we were kids, my parents read us Lord of the Rings aloud at bedtime, and my little brother (maybe 6 or 7 when we started?) was OBSESSED with Gandalf, to the point that he begged my mom to make him a grey cloak for Halloween (but let's be honest he wore it instead of a sweatshirt or coat whenver he could get away with it). When we reached the climax of the Mines of Moria scene, he literally hid the cloak away in the bottom drawer of his dresser and went into mourning. When Gandalf got his New Look, my brother decided old school was still the best school and happily whipped the grey cloak back out and wore it alllllllll the tiiiiiiiime. TLDR: Cloaks are the best and my brother was adorable.

Speaking as a history nerd, I can actually speak on why people stopped wearing cloaks. People used to just...not spend as much time outside in the winter. Yes, people used to have to do a LOT of work in a day. But a lot of time in the winter was spent in the house, and going outside was pretty much rushing into the barn, rushing to another house, or taking a wagon into town. But because we now have a lot more leisure time spent outside in the winter, as well as large cities that we live in and spend time in, we just have more need for our arms. And when cloaks were popular, those with arm holes were actually unpopular since they let in the cold. However, because we often have controlled heating nowadays, there's no real reason not to wear cloaks anymore. They're actually my preferred outside garment. I mostly wear a coat when I need to do shopping and don't want to open up a cloak and release my heat bubble.

I'm showing this video to my boyfriend after he suddenly asked me "why cloaks aren't in fashion anymore? I would love one, but people would laugh at me", but here we have a community of cloak-lovers that shows him that not everybody would laugh ❤️

Rachel: worried we won’t be entertained by all the sewing videos Me: casually binges all the sewing videos she has made and wishing there were more.

Another factor nobody mentioned is the effect of the sewing machine. Pre-sewing-machine, most cultures had clothing that were made out of big simple shapes--rectangles and triangles, mostly--with as little sewing as possible because it's easier that way. A cloak requires a LOT less sewing than a coat; they're easier to make. But once you have sewing machines, the difference in labor and time costs to make the two garments is a lot smaller, so you don't have that factor keeping the cloak in play.

“Basically like carrying a big old blanket around” sound comfy.

There's something about voluminous garments that just loudly proclaim DRAMA! MYSTERY! INTRIGUE! ROMANCE! NOSTALGIA! (e.g. cloaks, mantles, great kilts and earasaids).

"If I want to dress like a full Elven warrior I will" LOVE

I didn't realize how good the clothing design and fabric was years back because their clothes were stylish, good quality and so nice and warm while now we have to wear ten different jackets, a scarf and mittens just to be decently warm.

Last time I was this early Whiskey Grandpa was just Whiskey Dad

Love how the cloaks turned out. I wish they make a comeback as they are the best option to wear with long dresses. Also, side note, the reveal footage was so well done, very good composition and image setting.

my grandmother used to make ALL of her clothes when my mum was a kid, and she had a full length white cloak that she would wear to special occasions. It is gone now, but I think she still has the pattern for it somewhere, one day in the far future, I'm going to ask if I can look through her attic.