Princess Cinderella has her Cloak

I wasn't sure what to call this for the post. Some call it a cloak, some a cape, some a shawl and at the moment, being tired, I am forgetting what I have been calling it all week. Princess, however, calls it a "cloak" so that is what I will call it.


I can't believe how quickly the cloak came together. I also can't believe that sewing the trim lace on took me about 40 hours!

When Princess said she was doing, "On the Steps of the Palace" for musical theater and we listened to the song, it has such a long introduction that she has about 24 counts of just music before she has to sing. 


I told her I was worried that it would take some distraction on her part to carry it off and keep the audiences attention before the song even starts. She said she would just be running around the stage.

True, the Princess is "running" from the prince but she still needs to keep the audiences attention while running and give them things to look at and how to set the scene. 

We talked about things she could do to set the scene for them like losing her shoe as she is running etc. 

I suggested a cape and she said she didn't want one because in the movie, the Princess isn't wearing one. 

I shared that in the movie, they can distract the audience with different shots and how they cut the cameras but on stage, the actress has to keep the audiences attention. 

She thought about it and asked me what it would look like. 

Just happened that while at the second hand store looking for the glass slippers one day, I found this blue homemade table cloth for $3. The edges had been surged and were a bit wavy and I thought it would match the dress perfectly. 


I put the two ends together and measured around Princess leaving the wavy edges in the front, and when we thought it was big enough, I cut the center out and had two end pieces with the cute edge at the front. 

I then sewed the pieces down the center in the back. If I were going to finish the edges myself, I would have cut the cape out of one piece but since I needed the edges, I had to make a center seam. 
 
I then gathered the top edge of the cape, not at the front edges, but in the back center, so that most of the gathering would be in the back. 

I cut a rectangle for the hood by just holding the fabric over her head and making it long enough to be a hood. You can see at first, it is just a rectangle of fabric. I didn't want there to be a seam in front so I folded the fabric over before cutting it so the hood is double thick with the folded edge near her face. 
 
I folded the top back of the hood down in the center making a pleat for the back of her head. You can see it clearly in the picture of the cape hanging from the door and also I tried to show the folding of the back pleat in one of the pictures after sewing it together. 

Once the tucked pleat is made, I pinned the hood to the cape matching the back center seams. 
I then sewed the hood onto the cape with right sides together. 

Because the fabric is sheer, it frays a lot so I surged or zig-zagged all the seam edges so it wouldn't fray.

I hand stitched the lace on the entire front edge of the cloak. It took 40 hours. I would suggest that you find a less troublesome lace for your edges. Since it was something she will probably keep, I made the effort to make it nice. 
 
It looks beautiful and I was able to find a clip that matched. I think it was from the back of a dress when that was popular in the 90's to have clips cinch in the back of the dresses.

It will be fun to see how it looks when we actually do her hair for competition. 

No matter what she wears, she is a Princess to me!