If you’ve read Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn book series, then you know what a Mistcloak is… Here’s my take on them for me and my podcast co-hosts!

I used inspiration from the blog listed at the end. I started with a more traditional cloak pattern – Simplicity 00796. I used the hood and extra yoke pieces from the A pattern. Something similar would likely work – mostly you need a circle to go around your shoulders and a hood to cover your head. The rest is a lot of one inch strips.

First, I measured Jordan’s shoulders and how long he would want the strips to be – from about arm-pit area to his mid-calf. Bill chose to have his slightly longer, which I trimmed upon delivery. I ended up not needing the shoulder measurements because the pattern was one size fits all. But feel free to cut out the pattern piece to be sure of the fit before you commit it to fabric. I have started making my own copies of patterns out of medical bed paper, which is fairly cheap and you don’t have to worry about cutting out one size of the pattern, only to find you need a larger size at a later date. I measured the bottom length of the capelet and used math to figure out how many yards of fabric I would probably need. To be frank, I underestimated. Partially because math is not my strong point. And partially because I cut some of the strips out the wrong way — and wasted fabric.

Don’t be like me. Take your time to be extra sure you’re not wasting fabric.

So, with the math done I ordered my fabric. A lot of fabric. I think it was close to five yards for the three cloaks. (I later had to buy at least three more to make the fourth — and one still doesn’t have strips cut!) It was gray double brushed fleece from fabric.com. I highly recommend that website – you can buy samples for a few dollars if you need to color match or just touch the stuff. Some projects need to have the right texture and a sample is just what you need. I’ve liked everything I’ve gotten from them and their customer service has been good for me. To get free shipping you need to spend $49. This is far easier for me to manage than I’d like to admit. I covered my kitchen table with this fleece – it was at least folded over once, if not two or three times. I used fleece because it doesn’t fray, a major bonus when making about 168 for the two layers of tassels/strips.

With my giant roll of fabric in hand, I determined how big the strips should be. I had read that people have used 1/2″ or 1″. I decided to go with the latter, 1″, because it looked better to me and because it meant I’d be cutting half as many strips.

As I am a petite woman and not a full grown man, I cut out one of the one size fits all yokes (shoulder parts) and draped it over me. It was huge! So I used clips to approximate how big I thought it should be for me. And I cut that sucker down to size.

To cut this particular piece, I folded the fabric in half to keep it symmetrical and to cut down on how big my pattern piece needed to be – I had traced it onto medical bed paper. To not waste as much fabric, I kept tweaking where the fold was in the fabric and had the edge I was going to cut be right there on, well, the edge. I tried out my pattern weights and wished they’d ended up heavier, but they worked all right.

I apparently didn’t take pictures, but I cut out the hood in a similar method – the fold line on the folded edge of the fabric and voila, it’s symmetrical! You will need to take the time to make sure there aren’t wrinkles or extra fabric tucked anywhere. (Trust me, those are horrible realizations.) Also, I recommend marking any darts/necessary marks from the pattern with pins or a fabric pencil or pen. It is so much easier than having to refer back to the pattern when you’re in the middle of sewing.

From there, we are onto cutting out the strips. …all of them. I made a horrible choice with my first set and cut them out while kneeling at my coffee table. Do *not* do this to your back. Get a proper height table, use your cutting mats underneath and expect that this will take a while. Watch your favorite TV show or a couple movies you’ve seen a million times. And by all means, spread it out over a couple days. Your back will thank you. (But don’t pass up opportunities to have silly pictures with mountains of fabric strips. Highly recommended.)

The hardest part was keeping them consistent. The fleece will stretch if you’re not careful and I ended up with some wasted fabric even when I was aware of it. For the cloaks where I knew the approximate length they needed to be, I cut it down to that length and a few more inches. I left those few inches whole for a very specific reason — so I can attach all those strips to the yoke/shoulders and not have to sew them on individually. It still was really fiddly, but so much better than the alternative. I did not try to cut out two strips at once, the chance was way too high that I’d have it folded or wrinkled underneath and then ruin that strip. Some corners just aren’t meant to be cut.

In the above picture, I laid my clear acrylic ruler (they go by lots of names) on the fleece at the inch mark. Unfortunately it doesn’t run the whole length of a strip, so I had to cut either the top (leaving those couple inches) or the bottom, cut as far as I can, move the ruler, and repeat. Try not to let your starting point get distorted. I don’t have a perfect solution for that, but if you take your time and are careful it should work out pretty well. I did use pins to mark it as one point and it helped. Marking it with a fabric pencil (that washes off with water) could also work. As you cut more and more strips, make sure to move them out of the way, but keep doing your best not to stretch your fabric.

You can use scissors if that’s all you have, but I would highly recommend a rotary cutter. You use it just like a pizza cutter! But don’t use it for pizza – just fabric. And make sure it’s always used on top of a cutting mat.

If you’re lining your cloak – which I decided to do after I’d finished mine and hadn’t started Bill or Jordan’s – then you would just cut a piece of whichever fabric you’d like in the hood and/or yoke. I chose a shiny silver polyester with a little texture to it. The choice is yours – do what you’d like! And make sure you cut it out from the pattern the wrong way – it’s going to be the interior so it needs to be flipped. (It isn’t as big of a deal with this hood or yoke, but other patterns will matter more.)

So now we have everything cut out! It’s assembly time. I decided to assemble the yoke and hood first – the outer layers. The hood has two darts on each side. Follow your pattern instructions! Here’s my finished darts – you tuck them underneath at the two marks and sew up just that length. Darts can be tricky, so feel free to practice them on scrap fabric if you don’t want to ruin your final product. And don’t feel bad about getting weird results – just keep calm, look closely at the stitching and make sure the tension/settings are right on your sewing machine. Needles do get dull over time, so try to change them if something looks off on them or it’s been a project or two since you put in this one. (I am not great at this, but trying to get better!)

With the darts done, you attach the yoke and hood at the neck. They should be close to the same length. If they’re not, then here’s a tip I got from a friend for gathering fabric. Find the center of each piece of fabric, mark with a pin. Then find the middle of each side on each piece. So break it down into half, fourths, eighths, etc, until you can match up those marks on the hood and yoke and then fold the extra length in mini-darts. I hope the pictures explain it if my words don’t. With the two seams (edges) matched up, sew or serge them together! I didn’t have the right color thread for my serger, so I didn’t use it. And it intimidated me more then. It still intimidates me sometimes.

After gathering and sewing them together, hem your front edges on both pieces. I tucked them under and very carefully sewed them with a straight stitch. Now they’re so nice and neat! (Note – when I did mine, I finished the hood edge first, so the picture is showing it pinned together so I could check that it matched up how I liked from the right side.)

Now, a note about linings. You can do these a couple ways. You can hand stitch the entire thing afterwards, but that can be quite tedious. Sometimes it is the best method, though – you have to follow the pattern instructions and use your best judgement. I use my machine for some parts and touch up with hand stitching – a ladder or slip stitch usually – to put my linings in.

When I did Bill and Jordan’s, I put the lining into the hood and attached it to the neck all in one go. I machine stitched down the lining along the capelet neck at a later step – but hand stitched the sides to make it easier to match the fit.

Now, you may notice that I have fancy stitches along the edges of the yoke. If you want to do said stitches – with hand embroidery (I don’t know how still, believe it or not!) or with a programmed machine stitch, do this about now. Trying to do decorative machine stitching when you have the whole cloak just about assembled is a huge pain – do it when the pieces are still more manageable. My machine is fancy-ish and has a lot of cool patterns. I still haven’t used a lot of them, but I thought this looked fun and set my machine to this stitch, lined it up, and went for it. My machine did most of the work, I just guided the fabric through it, paused with the needle down and pivoted the fabric for corners, and stopped it when it was done. I would recommend doing the stitch along the lining and outside yoke pieces separately. Uses more thread and time, but the result is more likely to look good. My picture shows how the stitch can get off a bit if you move it through too fast or it’s dealing with too much fabric. Brainstorm fun stitching patterns – mix straight and patterns, whatever you think looks great! And feel free to test them on scrap fabric to see how it’ll turn out. Better than trying it on the finished product and then seeing it looks terrible – picking out stitches is not my hobby of choice. And some fabrics will be permanently affected by a hole getting put in it.

So now we have a hood and yoke (with maybe fancy stitching) attached to each other and finished edges for parts. It’s time for strips! If you want to break up the monotony of cutting strips, you can get all the other parts assembled and then finish cutting strips – I did this at least once. Partially to break up the task, partially because I can cut fabric upstairs and supervise my children.

The way I found worked best was to attach the strips to the lining first, using those couple inches as the fabric that goes underneath the lining edge and having only cut strips showing on the final product. In the picture the bottom edge (right) of the lining (silvery fabric) isn’t hemmed nor have fancy stitches. I would recommend doing both first. So, hem the bottom edge of the lining, do any fancy stitches, and then attach the strips. Got it?

The fancy gray octopus monstrosity is me laying out an entire mistcloak and pinning the strips into place. You can sew the strips together first – to make sure they’re offset from each other and filling all the gaps – or you can do it at this step. Attach them where you haven’t cut the fabric with a straight stitch. Or two sets, if you’re feeling iffy about how well it’ll hold. How many layers you do at once just depends on how many you’re comfortable dealing with at once. You don’t have to lay it out like this, but this was me making sure my strips and lining were the same length. (I also had the outside yoke attached to this particular cloak. A lot of efficiency was gained after I finished my first one.)

We’re getting close now! So we have a hood (lined) attached to the outside yoke, and the yoke lining with the tentacle beast of strips as another piece. Time to put them together. I would recommend doing a test pinning first – make sure everything lines up how you want and there isn’t any weird bunching or horrible mis-measurements. I would sew the neck first, matching it up so it’s lining on top (wrong side up), hood lining, hood outside, then the yoke outside. It’s four layers, so take your time. If this looks like it won’t lay nicely, skip it and do the next step and hand stitch the top of the lining in place.

Then I would carefully smooth everything and take your time pinning the side and bottom together. Be prepared to unpin and redo some as you finish one side versus another. That’s a lot of fabric to deal with. You’ll want all your hard work to look good. With everything lined up and pinned how you want, you just sew them together. Make sure to tuck under any raw lining edges; feel free to leave raw fleeces edges if you like how it looks – and take your time with all those strips.

Now you try it on and mark where you want your toggle closure. I put mine farther inside the cloak than expected to make it close how I wanted. I hand stitched mine on with a heavy duty thread and tacked down the extra length of fabric/pleather hook on both sides to make sure the cloak closed how I liked. I used invisible thread and while it’s a pain to hand sew it does the job and is hardly noticeable. Without it, the cloak flopped open and just looked odd.

Here’s the toggle I used – but choose whichever one you like best. I thought this looked like wood and fit the setting. I ended up adding a second toggle to help distribute the weight and keep it closed how I liked.

With your toggle or closure of choice is done there’s just trimming the strips to length. This is best done with assistance unless you have a life size cast or mannequin. You want to make sure the fit on your shoulders and chest is correct. If you just put it on a hanger or a mannequin with smaller shoulders the back will droop a lot further than it would on you. And no one wants a super short back and long front with a Mistcloak. So either have a friend cut the strips to the desired length or cut them yourself while someone who’s a similar enough size wears your cloak. You can try to cut them all exactly the same length, but I would recommend instead cutting them within a half inch or less of the same length. Just enough variance to make it look like there’s been natural wear and it helps the flowy aesthetic. Want it extra ragged? Trim them with a jagged pattern, drag the tips in the mud, cut out nicks. Weathering fabric is a thing – I just didn’t with mine.

The picture is mid-trimming. This mannequin has similar shoulders to mine, so I felt safe to trim it this way. The right side is what I have left to trim – but you can see the variance in length.

Now it’s time for some finished pictures!

Here’s Jordan and mine on mannequins. Adjust the length of strips to where you want them. Jordan opted to have his hit his mid-calf or so to keep from tripping.

I had an awesome photo shoot with Keyaroscuro (Instagram) and here are a few she took of me as Vin.