Doctor Strange Cosplay - The Cloak of Levitation

Hullo once again, strangers from distant lands, friends of old!

Today is the day I begin to fill you in on the rest of the making of my fem / gender-bent Doctor Strange costume, as promised. :D  For starters, we're going to discuss the epic Cape of Levitation.

(Just gotta say, after seeing the movie, I love this cape so much more... ;D)

SO!  After some preliminary research, and buying and returning some fabric from Joann, I ended up buying 3 yards of a fabulous cotton twill from Etsy for the main part of the cape -- and for the few darker accents, I used the crepe side of some crepe back satin I had leftover from my very first cosplay, actually: Arwen!

I folded the fabric in half width-wise, and cut the hem into a half circle, as well as rounding out the neckline. Later on, I cut more of the length off the edge bottoms, to better emulate the real costume's asymmetry.

The next step was to create the "yoke" of sorts around the neck and shoulders.  I played around with draping for a while until I came up with something I liked (with the amount of fabric I had left).  I then cut out the pieces and sewed them down with the edges folded under.

Next, I worked on the shoulder "patch" for a while, getting the drape and color contrast right, then sewing the pieces together and to the cape.

feat. Arwen fabric! ^_^

Next I moved on to the collar, by far the most difficult part of the cape to make -- it took me a good 8 hours or more to get this thing right.  Yes, I know.  I'm crazy. ;D

First, I made a purple mock-up of the collar (perfect color right???), then moved on to the real fabric.

empty spool because i love completion

I added interfacing and straightened out paper clips wire to add some structure to it... but then realized that I really just was not happy with the shape of the collar, so I went back and made lots more alterations, adding an extra seam and a sort of godet in the back.

Once I was mostly happy with how that looked (I honestly could have spent another 8+ hours working on it but no time UGH), I secured the wire to it with some tack stitches, sewed the lining to the facing, and then sewed it all to the cape!

Now, we're almost done.  Next was hemming, and one last ironing (besides all the seam pressing done throughout the making of the cape which I didn't mention) to get all the wrinkles out...

And the final touches: you might have wondered how exactly I got the cloak to stay on my shoulders, seeing how it's not connected in the front?  Well, allow me to share my secret weapon: magnets!  In this picture I was just checking placement; I actually superglued the magnets to the back of the tunic so I could wear the costume without the cape if I wanted, without the magnets showing.  And then I superglued the magnets to the ends of the cape collar so they would secure together perfectly when worn. :)

The VERY last touch?  Some gold accents at the edges of the neckline...

And Doctor Strange's Cloak of Levitation is complete!!!