Tharja (Fire Emblem: Awakening) WIP - Cape

Tharja (Fire Emblem: Awakening) WIP -  Cape

HI ALL - I’M NOT DEAD. I’m just…really bad at updating OTL

So as I’m writing this, Tharja is actually 95% done and was already debuted at Anime USA this year but I never got to share my WIP here so I’ll be sharing each part bit by bit!

Before I started work on Tharja I thought “This is just a cape and underwear…how hard can that be” and BOY was I WRONG.

Firstly, capes use  A LOT OF FABRIC and it’s just ENDLESS. Thankfully, I’m short (just barely 5′2″) and only needed about 3yds of the cape fabric and lining to make a cape that was 48 inches long. There’s a ton of tutorials on capes out there so I won’t bore you - the cape shape I used for Tharja was a half circle cape. 

The first thing I did was the gold trim for the cape. In the references above it’s not double fold bias tape since it’s only on one side of the cape so I just sewed it on top of the blue part. Since I didn’t want any visible top stitching I used heat n’ bond tape to keep the vinyl flat when I was sewing it down to the cape.

Originally I was going to paint the eye pattern on the back of the cape since I have a huge fear of heat n’ bond since it tends to peel around the edges for me BUT I decided on doing it anyway since I couldn’t find a gold paint that matched the vinyl. The eyes are just applique with ultrahold heat n’ bond that I patterned and cut out by hand. I used a piece of fabric between the vinyl and fabric when ironing it on so the vinyl wouldn’t melt. I did this A LOT which really helped preventing it from peeling. After folding the cape and packing it in my suitcase twice and two wears the applique hasn’t peeled at the edges at all :o