Handmade Ruby Red / Red Riding Hood Cape

So, the day (literally) that our cape inventory came online, my good friend Missy messaged me on Facebook about a custom Ruby Red from Once Upon a Time cape. Now, OUAT has been on my Netflix watchlist forever, but I haven't actually started watching it (boo, I know. I'm fired). So, I googled it found the following:

This cape is serious business! Of course, the costume designers and some bloggers have the resources to get their hands on this $27/yard brocade fabric. We, decidedly, did not! Though Missy was willing to pay the hefty price, actually replicating this cloak would be a LOT of work. Ms. Confessions of a Seamstress even says it: she had to surge all of the edges to keep this stuff from fraying. Not my idea of a great time, and the serger we have access to is actually about an hour away. So, not practical or economical. With labor it would have been about $400. That's a LOT for a Halloween costume.

So, we went in search of the perfect imitation fabric--there's gotta be a great red cotton with a lovely brocade or jacquard-esque pattern available, right? You'd think it would have been easy.

Thank you, Grumpy Cat.

Our first expedition took us to Hancock Fabrics. All things considered, the Hancock in our neighborhood is really only good for polar fleece. Their selection is ridiculously large. I guess they also have a decent selection of upholstery fabric as well, but I prefer Home Fabrics for that (which was actually our first stop, but they happened to be closed by the time we got there--don't worry, we went back). They did not have a very good selection of red fabric in general. At Hancock, we found this light-weight cotton:

One round's worth of a sort of decent option at Store #1, and it was really much TOO light. So, it's off to JoAnn's! They have a much larger selection and variety of fabrics, but still not exactly what we're looking for:

I mean, this one was very pretty; silk with the embroidered roses would definitely make a decent Red Riding Hood cloak. It's too bright and orange to be Ruby Red's cape, though.

I took this picture out of sheer desperation; there was practically nothing else that even came close.

So, we tried again over the following weekend. We started at the Home Fabrics, where they of course had exactly the right fabric, only in the wrong colors (green and purple would still look amazing as a cape...just not THIS cape). Home Fabrics had a larger selection of reds than we'd encountered thus far, but still only one that was decent enough for a photo:

Pretty, but not stellar. So the search continued. We ventured out of our neighborhood into a neighboring suburb and wound up at a quilting store that pretty much exclusively sold cotton.

Oh, and some excellent minky options!

So. Very. Soft.

So, if I ever need/want to make a minky blanket, I now know where to find it enmasse.

Finally, at this store, we located the fabric we'd end up using:

Still a bit orange, perhaps, but our customer loved the pattern on this one, so we ended up going with it. We did visit one more store in our neighborhood before committing all the way; it's a Bernina store that also sells wicked awesome sewing machines. I wish we would have gone there first! They had, by far, the largest selection of reds broacade/jacquard patterned fabric of all the others, but the one that would have been best was about $3 more per yard than the one above. Next time...

So, we picked up this one for $11.50 per yard, and a trecole lining for the inside for $10 per yard. The lovely and talented Taiza P. put them together and VIOLA!

Success. She's only a few inches shorter than Missy, so it's a bit long on her. Still, pretty excellent. 

The hood is nice & large.

This thing is even washable! And the outside can be ironed.

Needless to say, Missy loves it.

She could not have been more stoked about it. She's going to be building her Ruby Red costume around it, now, so hopefully more pics of everything are to come! For a cool $120, she's got the most awesome handmade costume cape ever!

Thanks for looking, Loves!
Always Yours,
The NWB