The canvas for the painter's creation is done. I cut and started sewing it yesterday before cooking a delicious dinner.

Well I am not bribing here.

My friend Manon said that the osso-buco I cooked yesterday was the best one she tasted in her life. Well THAT is compliment. It is certainly a great motivation for cooking other dinners for her and her fiancé. A lovely couple DH and I appreciate greatly.

But this is another story...  As I specified in my previous post, the cape is cut in a medium weight cotton and lycra fabric. I was very easy to work with. I finished the front edges with a narrow hem of about 0.8 cm turned twice and the hem is finished with the same method but I doubled the width. for the ties I cut one very long piece of fabric on selvage of 4cm wide. It is folded in two, pressed and then you bring both edges on the centre fold and you sandwich the edges inside by folding the ties in two again. Clear as mud ?

If my explanations are terrible because of English is not my mother tongue, here are pictures that must be worth a hundred words of not a thousand.

Step one: press flat the piece of fabric

Step two: press it in two

Step three: press one half towards centre

Step four: the the second half towards centre

Step five: sandwich both edges inside by folding it in two again.

Step six: use your edge foot the sew very close to the edge of the tie

Step seven: press again and tada !  Yes you all knew that, but just in case.

I added a collar to the original pattern (go to my previous post to see the Nina Ricci Pattern). The collar was drafted with the intention of giving a dramatic effect instead of a cutey look. This is done by having the upper corner going outward with a 30 degree angle (more or less). Ho! with this close up I see that I have threads to cut again ;-)


The shaping on the shoulder is done with a dart. The original dart was giving a strange shape to the cape. There were two distinct peaks sticking out of Daisy's (my dress form) shoulders. Needless to say, that the effect was not the one I looked for.

I elongated the darts of 2.5 cm and curved the end inward. Now it looks nice in my opinion.


This cape has 2.7 meters of hem. I was long to fold and sew and there is no way I would have done it by hand....  though I love hand stitching.