The Winter of No Sleeves

This winter (joyfully!) I will have three kids who are all old enough to want to get dressed by themselves but not old enough to actually manage all the details themselves. Details like putting the right arm into the right sleeve, managing to get their hand all the way through the sleeve without getting tangled up, connecting the bottom parts of the zipper - it's all very complicated when you're three or four. Complicated and likely to completely derail a mom's morning.

Hence, I give you ... The Winter of No Sleeves.

This year, the kiddos (so weird to not just say "the boys") are going to have no outerwear that has sleeves and zippers. Usually, I get one light jacket and one heavy coat for each of the them. Sometimes if I'm able to find a really good quality formal coat, I'll get that too, but we don't have a lot of formal occasions to look sleek for, and our church is pretty casual. This year, we're doing cloaks. One fleece, one wool.

I made the fleece versions this week. I wanted to test out the pattern and fleece is a lot cheaper than wool. Also, the wool cloaks will need to be lined, so that's another level of trouble that I don't want to waste if the pattern isn't right.

Buying the fleece was fun. Twinkle instantly landed on his choice. Munchkin took more guidance. His favorite color is pink, so I wanted him to have a pink cloak, but I didn't want it to look like he was wearing a girl's cloak. ("Excuse me, saleslady, can you show me where you're keeping the non-feminine pinks?") We considered several different options and landed on a fabric that mostly reads BRIGHT!!! rather than just pink.

Beautiful as I know Munchkin to be, it's possible he's not a born model.

I made Munchkin's cloak using M6431, view F except that I didn't use the neckline cutout. I didn't really think it through before cutting it out. Not including the hood, Munchkin's cloak has 6 pieces: front, back, 2 side fronts and 2 side backs. With Twinkle's and Mei-Mei's, I streamlined the pattern so that it only has 2 cloak pieces: front and back.

The original pattern had no option that only used 2 pieces. The simplest option (view C) had a zipper up the front, which I didn't want because obviously, zippers complicate life. So I used the back pattern piece for this view and cut it out twice. To make the front piece, I recut the neckline using the front pattern piece as a guide. Clear as mud?

After the fact, I wish that I hadn't used the front cutout, because the cloaks run a smidge big and I didn't need the extra room that the cutout gives. Also, I cut 2" off the bottom of Twinkle's cloak so that it would be the right length and I cut 1.5" off the bottom of Munchkin's hood because it was oddly oversize. But overall, I'm pretty happy with the first Winter of No Sleeves experiment, and I think I'll be able to tweak the pattern satisfactorily later when I do the wool versions.

But what really makes me happy?

I had to make 3 cloaks. Three.