Baby Elven Cloak "muslin" in preparation for the Small Human Being Sewalong...

So, one of my first sewing projects for the SHBsewalong was a baby elven cloak. I want to get some cotton jersey knit, or maybe fleece (but, given the weather in dear Phoenix, I should probably go with the knit, so it can be worn more than 2x a year...)
The real one will be for the new baby, but I used Kuzzles (not yet 1) as my model here.

But I did have on hand a scrap of wool felt (I think it was 34" x 23"?), so the cloak length had to be 17"), and some of a brown sheet...sooo...

Here was my piece of felt. I cut out a simple half circle, and then cut a half circle neck out of that. The radius for the big half circle was 17", and the radius for the neck was maybe 2-3 inches, so 4 to 5 inches in diameter? (this ended up giving a neck that was too tight, around 13" long...next time the neck is going to have to be bigger)

Here is the piece of felt, folded in half, cut up. The semicircle is the cloak part. The hood is the rectangle.

My hood was just 2 rectangles (the piece is doubled over, so every piece in the image is actually double), it's in the upper right hand corner.
I sewed the rectangles together and tried it on the the baby for size....

She resisted.
Even with Grandma's assistance, this was all we got.

So I went off to find Jenny, who put up with being a test subject for me.

As I suspected, the simple rectangle method came out a bit too pointy for my taste.
So I just trimmed a tad off of the top.

Like in the illustration. And I cut 2 darts in the cloak shoulders (to get it to hang better)

Cutting out the shoulder dart.

 On a knit or woven cotton cloak, I'd just put a pleat in the shoulder, but since this was felt and on a baby, I cut the shoulder dart out.

Then I bag lined the hood with sheet scraps, and tried to bind the inside of the neck with a strip of sheet, so there wouldn't be scratchy bits poking there...

She didn't want to wear the cloak. Maybe it was because it was 96 degrees outside....

A miserable hobbit.

She cheered up a bit. I assured her it would be over soon...

She picked up a rock...shot be a doubtful glance....

 And tried to eat it.

Aaand then...

She was done.

Things I'll do differently next time (in April, for the sewalong)

1. Make it out of Jersey Knit, it will be less stiff and less warm
2. cut the neck hole bigger

Anyways, it was fun.

How to Make a Penannular Brooch (Fibula) Pin without a forge : Tutorial Part 2

So, this is part 2 of how to make a Penannular Brooch without a forge. (Part 1 here)

To make it from a coat-hanger and cheap galvanized steel wire.

Recap

Materials

• Galvanized Steel Wire Gauge 18, (It's cheap, $5 for 110 ft, this uses a few feet)
• Coathanger
• (Optional, for decor) Steel Wire Gauge 24 (Also at Lowes, $5 for 250 ft)
• (Optional, for decor) Metallic Spray paint

It's a much better deal than craft wire than the craft stores, which you get 10 or so feet for the same price. However, galvanized steel is really strong, and much harder to work with. An order of magnitude in price makes it worth it for me, and I like it's strength, but do know that its stiffer.

Tools

• 2 sets of good pliers (with flat part for gripping)
• Wirecutters 
• ruler
• permanent marker

So from last time we had this. (Tutorial part 1 here) And today we are going to make the pin.

 So the way Penannular brooches work, is the pin is a little longer than the diameter of the brooch. It can slide, so it dips down and picks up fabric, and then slides up into the "locked" position, and the pull of the cloak on it keeps it nicely shut. This works waaaay better than little modern pin brooches on heavy cloaks. (My wool cloak kept snapping open with the little modern pin, that's why I resorted to making these)


So we're going to make the pin out of the steel wire (gauge 18). If you are doing this out of pricier copper wire, you should probably go up a gauge or two, as you want it to be stiff.

So first measure the diameter of the pennanular brooch. Mine is around 2.5 inches so I want the finished pin to be 3 inches . We are going to fold the wire twice for strength, so you want the wire you cut to be 4X THE DESIRED LENGTH OF THE FINISHED PIN plus some for the loop and for little for finishing off raw edges etc. I wanted to be safe so I cut 15 inches for a 3 inch pin.

Measure and mark the middle (it wasn't 6 inches, the pic is wrong, you get the idea)

Fold it along the middle, around the brooch.

 Now this is the part you determine how long you want the pin to be, I want it to be 3 inches, so I mark a little more than 3 inches on ONE WIRE, and use the flat part of the pliers to bend it sharply.

(You do this by gripping it with the flat part, and using your hand/the table, to fold the wire crisply over at that point. I needed my other hand to use the camera, but my thumb had just been there)

You do the same thing to the second, but mark the site for bending a tad shorter than the first, so that they nest nicely, like this.

 Then you use the pliers to pinch done on the L bends until they are nice little tight hairpin turns like this.

 Then you fineagle them a bit with your hand or the pliers to get them to nest nicely like this.

 This is the head of your pin. We don't want sharp pokey wire ends snagging on your cloak fabric, so that is why they are like this.

Next, you grip the head of your pin FIRMLY with the flat part of your pliers. You do not want this to twist, you want this part to remain intact.

 You use the flat part of your other pliers to grab the rest of what will be the pin, and twist the wire. You are holding both pliers, the (blue) ones in your left hand staying still, keeping the head of the pin intact. The (black) pliers in your right swirling around in a clockwise motion, working your way to the base of the pin, twisting it all. My hand had just been on the black handled pliers, before I removed it to take this picture.

You twist till you get to the base. (you don't want to overdo it, remember, you want the pin to have a nice loop so it can slide freely)

 You see there is the loop, and the tails. I didn't fold it carefully, so one of my tails is longer than the other, which is fine. You want to cut one of the tails very short anyway, and then wrap up its pokey end with the other longer tail.

 All wrapped up. I did it mostly by hand, but pliers are also very useful to get nice tight wrapping and clamp down on the pokey bit at the end.

 You see one pokey end is covered up by the wrapping, the other is still exposed. You could cover this with some more gauge 24 wire (which is kinda like metal thread), or if you were really clever, use the long tail to stick a bead on it and then poke the last pointy end on a bead or something.

But there  you have it. All ready to be washed and painted.

"Open"

Shut

See how nicely it slides! (One of my first mistakes was making one with such a tight loop I couldn't slide the pin, and it was useless)
 
Now, it needs to be washed (several times) thoroughly with dish soap, because wire has machine grease on it, which keeps the paint from sticking. It can be spray painted, preferably with primer. I plan to post on that in the future.

Here is it in action a scrap of fabric (because my wool cloak is packed away in the desert).
This scrap is actually quite tightly woven. I've found it can go through pretty much any fabric if you work it through by pressing the pin tip onto the fabric and rubbing your finger on the other side.

 However it does leave these little pin marks on very tightly woven fabric. I don't care as it was a nice place for me to remember where to stuff it through, and I thought it looked more weatherbeaten and historically accurate.

If it bothers you, you could make a thinner pin from just 1 bend of wire, although it wouldn't be as strong in holding the tug of your cloak. But if your cloak was made out of a tightly woven light fabric to start with (like the tightly woven scrap above), than its not going to be as heavy as my wool cloak anyway.

Part 3: Painting the brooch, coming soon.
*************************************************************************
Here's pictures of one I did with a single bend of wire. You just have to be a little more creative at the loop to cover up the pointy ends. (here I used beads and beading wire), but this pin isn't as strong as the doubled one, it would probably bend with the weight of a heavy wool cloak....

 Comment if you have more questions :)

Part 3: Painting the brooch, coming soon.

Elven Penannular Brooches Designs

Elven Penannular Brooches

I was thinking about Elven Brooches.
While the brooches in the movie are beautiful, they never struck me as being hugely functional.

Leaf Brooch from the Lord of the Rings Movies

Because, basically its a glorified brooch pin. Which works great to hold lightweight fabrics together. But brooch pins aren't the sturdiest thing to hold a heavy wool cloak shut. I found this out using another brooch pin to hold my heavy wool cloak shut in the Philadelphia winter.

I found, what worked well were penannular brooches (fibula) invented in the Iron Age and used throughout history. Plus they are fairly easy to make, you don't need a forge, and can use old hangers, picture hanging wire, and standard toolbox tools to make them. (See tutorial here, part 1, part 2)

An Ancient Penannular Brooch: Sturdy and Practical

But I want to make Penannular Brooches that look Elven. We know they worked with metal, and loved leaf designs. Arwen was wearing a "belt of leaves, wrought in silver" at Rivendell. And the Loth Lorien elves made them the brooches which Tolkien describes as looking like a "newly opened beech leaf."

Beech Leaves

More Beech Leaves

 So I got to designing things, and here are a few sketches.

The basic brooch part, I can make with hangers, and if I want the vine-like effect, wrap in wire (see tutorial 1, 2). The leaf embellishment, I am still trying to figure out. The simplest would be to buy some metal-stamped leaves (for jewelry making) off etsy and wire (or solder, or glue, or epoxy) them on the ends. The same would go for securing the leaves to the end of the pin (the pin needs to be able to slid around on the brooch, so the leaves need to be attached to the pin, and not the ring)

I could also use wooden beads on the ends, and carve and paint them into leaf shapes.

Or use some sort of clay, and paint it. Or even metal clay ($$$).

Or cut thin metal sheeting, and learn how to stamp/tool metal leaves myself. It would all have to be cold-forging (aka what I can do with a tool box and my brains), as I don't have a forge.

OR paint leather and cut them into the shape of leaves and sew them onto the respective parts of the brooch with thread.

If I was going for pretty-looking and not authentic, I could try foil glued to plastic/glue gun molds, or painted baked salt-dough, etc.

I think using a deep green nailpolish over a shiny metal surface would give a beautiful effect. Like this tutorial, but with a lot more coats, to give it depth. Perhaps even lay wires down on the metal like leaf-veins, and fill in with the nailpolish. A kind of home-made cloisonne.
 We'll see.

UPDATE: So after slicing my fingers a few times, I decided to put beads (only wood or plastic, glass won't 'stick' on alas, unless solder or glue is involved) on the ends, and wrap the wire ends close to the base of the bead so its less likely to slice a finger.
I think, the best thing I can think for the leaves, is to get a flat wooden beads to get on the end. Then to carve and paint, and then woodglue, leaves onto the wooden beads.
For the leaves at the base, I think it would be ideal to use a bead (with a REALLY big threading hole) as the "hinge" of the pin (the pin is wire, and will be affixed to the bead), and then glue on a wooden (or metal) leaf from there....