Baronial Archery Champion Cloak

Cold weather is here in South Australia, and I have been thinking about warm clothing options for winter months. As I was considering options, I came across pictures of this cloak I made several years ago and forgot to post about.

The cloak is made of heavy wool, and the style is inspired by this extant piece:

Cape of Garzia Medici -held at the Pitti Palace. See more info here:The clothes of Cosimo I, Eleonora di Toledo and don Garzia - Auris Lothol (auris-lothol.info)

(A big thank you to Salome for this reference!)

The cloak was created for the Baronial Archery Champion of my local SCA group to wear. The plan is for every Archery Champion's heraldry to be displayed on the cloak in chronological order of winning the Championship.

The wool is fulled and slightly felted, and so doesn't fray, which meant that it did not need to be lined.

There are currently two other Champion cloaks in use in my group; red for the Heavy Champion and blue for the A&S Champion.

The neck is bound with yellow twill tape which also serves as ties. All the sewing was done by hand, and the little arrows were embroidered.

Baronial A&S Cloak

A few months ago I attempted a sewing project that was completely new to me. I volunteered to sew a short cloak  to adorn the Innilgard A&S Champion. I had the heavy combat Champion's cloak  to use as a pattern, which made things a lot easier.

The blue wool was donated by Lord Jarnskeggi. It was lovely to sew. I was lucky to be able to cut the whole cloak from one panel, and I edged it with zigzag stitch. I then sewed white hem tape along the cut edge and used matching white bias tape to make a panel of trim. (Blue and white are SCA Arts and Sciences colours.) Cotton webbing tape was used to make the neck facing and ties. I sewed small falcon bells along the trim line to symbolise the A&S bells which are given to competition winners. Baroness Linet graciously gave up her time to help me finish sewing the little bells on.




 Cutting the cloak panel

The two sizes of bias tape

The cloak was made to a pattern based on cloaks made by Viscountess Ingerith. It is not too heavy and quite comfortable to wear. The little bells make a pleasant jingling noise.

I have yet to get a good photo of  the finished item, but I will soon!