Sunday, March 21, 2010

Cape Clip Assembly

This is the final step in building a cape, short of sewing the whole thing together. I probably documented this more than I needed to, but hey, it was fun.

I started out by making a paper pattern for the cape clips. This was sized off a tracing I did from the real deal cape. I extended one end of it so I would have some wiggle room.



I then traced the pattern onto a scrap of cape material that I whipped up the other day. I used a fine tip sharpie to do it.



I then went to my kitchen and used a rotary cutter and a straight edge to cut the shapes out. I wish I would have used my rotary cutter when I was doing the body suit test. It's a great tool, cuts really clean, and leaves nice lines.



Here's the final pieces.



Next, I needed to cut some velcro to go on the clips. Betcha didn't know there was velcro on the clips! Just like before, I went into Adobe Illustrator and drew up a pattern using a close up shot of the real deal cape that I had scaled to the proper size. I cleaned it up a little, and then printed a couple of them out.



I used a silver sharpie (since black wouldn't work) to mark the back side of the velcro. This made it very easy to cut out.



Here are the final two velcro pieces for the cape clips.



I then took them to the sewing machine and attached them. This actually proved to be a bit of a pain, but I won't bore you with the details. Bottom line, I got it done.



The last step was to sew the cape clips closed.



So that's it for the cape clips. Only ONE task remains on the cape, and that's to sew up the neckline, and then it's done. Too bad this is just a prototype, and that I'll have to repeat the entire process at least one more time!!!

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