In which she encounters problems

 

...and no, it's not just the fact that the kitty wants to sit on exactly the thing I'm working on...

This is the pattern I started with for the cloak for our time-traveling Scrooge character.  I intended to just use one shoulder cape, but otherwise I wanted the same.  I made one years ago when we were doing the Gospel According to Scrooge.  I never saw it after that production.  Dunno  what happened to it...

Anyway, I had something close to 6 yards of brown poly moleskin...it's a heavy, drapey, sueded fabric with a satiny back.  It was quite popular, you know, fifteen or so years ago.  Can't find it anywhere now.

HOWEVER...today...I pulled out the pattern and, instead of having 3 actual shoulder capes, it has ONE..the other two faux capes are flounces sewn directly to the main cloak.  So I couldn't just use the longer one, as I'd planned.  I couldn't remember what I did with the first one (it was 2005 when I made it...) but I figured I probably just added onto the actual top layer; it was the only one of the short cape pieces that was cut out. Simple enough to do. 

So I pulled out the brown fabric that had been in storage at church since 2005.  We'd made some short ladies' capes from it, but there was a goodly bit left.  Just rough measuring it before I brought it home, I thought it was close to 6 yards.  Turns out it was 5 3/8...and it was a scant 45" wide.  Oof.  I couldn't put the main cloak pieces on a folded piece of fabric; I was going to have to cut them one at a time.  And the cloak pieces by themselves required 54" of  length. So, not including the top cape, the collar or the collar stand, I needed 6 full yards.  Shortening the cloak really wasn't an option...remember, our Scrooge actor is 6'4".  I didn't want the cloak to hit his knees.

What to do, what to do.... I abandoned the sewing room for a time, doing a frantic internet search for ANY black or brown fabric that had a nice drape and found absolutely nothing.    My go-to fabricdotcom has been assimilated into the Amazon abyss, and somebody needs to tell the folks at Amazon how to make filters so you can actually find something.  Fashonfabrics club was also a fail.  I didn't want wool fabric..1) $$$ and 2) moths... and there was just nothing in a drapey poly or poly rayon blend to be had.  So I had to make do.

Well, I *could* fit the pieces all on the fabric if I ignored the fact that there is a nappy, sueded surface and just count on the lighting to hid the difference in the shading.  We had to have SOMETHING.  So, I figured I'd go ahead and make up what I have, and keep an eye open for some wider fabric to make a last minute switch if possible.

Then, when I was laying the pattern out, I noticed that one selvedge of the fabric looked odd.  Backed away from it and...it looks like water had soaked all up on only one side, leaving a wavy border that extended as much as 7" in from the edge the entire length of my fabric and was devoid of the nappy surface.  It's the weirdest thing.  I can't imagine what could have done that.   But I had already looked for replacement fabric so...I decided to just keep going, and then run the thing through the laundry. Mayhap if it's just that it got wet and soaked and dried flattened, a trip through the washer and dryer would revive it.  

Maybe.

So I got about halfway through it before I ran out of bobbin thread on the sewing machine and decided to call it a night.  If I can get it finished in time, I'll run it up to the rehearsal tomorrow afternoon and see how it looks in movement.  It may not matter if the nap isn't quite right.

Maybe.