Ranger's Bocksten Hood - Spring 2017 Edge of the Wild Follow-Up

A place for pics and tutorials on making Soft Kit (clothing and accessories like buckles and cloak pins).

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Greg
Urush bithî 'nKi ya-nam bawâb
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Ranger's Bocksten Hood - Spring 2017 Edge of the Wild Follow-Up

Post by Greg »

At the end of my article in the recently published Spring 2017 Edge of the Wild, I stated that I had decided against the gore-like shoulder extensions that the original sported. I was thinking this specifically because the original was made for a person of status who would not have used it in a woods-roaming or combat context. After the fact, I considered where my shoulders currently ended, and decided that I wanted a little more coverage than I had. I was still pleased with where I had made the front end on my chest, rather than the much-lower mantle on the original, so I compromised between the two designs in this way:

Take a measurement of the curved, unfinished edge from front-and-center to midback on each side (they may be slightly different, so measure both!) Cut a piece of material this long, with as much width as you desire the shoulders to extend from your current unfinished edge. Take each of these rectangles and backstitch (or running stitch...this isn't a high-stress seam) them from front to back onto your unfinished hem, leaving the seam allowance on the inside. As we did before in the newsletter, tack these edges down to either side of your stitch with a running stitch.
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After this is all finished, mark the center of your shoulder (the furthest point out from you) on the outermost edge of this new piece, and draw a gently sweeping curve from this midpoint to the front, and again from the midpoint to the back. The fabric will "fade to nothing" in the front and back center; I left it 1/4" long so I could fold it over and hem it.

Cut this curve off, and hem stitch both sides. The end result is a shoulder that gracefully curves over your shoulders, but not so deeply that the arms can't be raised comfortably for our sort of 'work'.
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The end result proves that the professor knew what he was doing when he not only separated hoods and cloaks, but when he described the grey company wearing dark grey. I've intentionally matched the local colors virtually identically with my garments, so in the sun or shade, rain or snow, whatever the elements, light, and shadows are doing to the colors of the trees, they're doing to me too.
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Then, when we put it all together, hood with cloak, the profile is not all that dissimilar to what we're used to seeing in films...but there's an awful lot of function and comforthiding in there that we didn't have before!
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If you're on this forum for the first time, led here by the newsletter, welcome! Introduce yourself! I assure you, you find yourself among friends.
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-Greg
Now the sword shall come from under the cloak.
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