Cloak and Dagger

All dressed for travel, Rana wears her new hooded cloak and basket harness, ready to carry
Kyra along with her. In front of her are some of the twig characters in the garden,
a pas de deux couple dance at her feet, while Twigman reads a fallen answer leaf.

Mood Fabrics comes through again with the most sumptuous luxurious fabrics that I couldn't imagine looking for, and yet I find them there. After auditioning several fabrics for a couple weeks, even going to another great fabric store specifically for what I thought would be right (wasn't), it was a trip to the great fabric mecca now on La Brea in LA (with another in New York) that did Halfland good. Very good. Here's how:

What you see above is my draping the Rana puppet with the fabrics I bought at Mood for her cloak to see which to use and how. The left two show a highly textured woven wool in red and a second choice of an incredible plum wine woolen boiled (felted) cashmere that I bought a smaller amount of. They both looked right as compared to the nearly all white cobweb look I had been leaning towards did. The weight was better and the darker reds more in keeping with the character. She'll still wear cobwebs as she walks through them though.

It came together when I decided to use the plum fabric to embellish the red with a simple vine applique all around the bottom and to trim the opening of the hood. The rest was used to line the hood and as much of the cape interior as possible. This way, both colors got to be worn. Seeds, pods, acorn nuts, and beans were used for the flower centers.

A close up of the red fabric being sew; waxed linen was used to secure the trimming around the arm openings; Rana in her work clothes trying on the new rope harness (accidentally found at Mood--requiring no mods to use! $10!!) See how the basket looks on her back in this post; my 1960's vintage papier mache Mexican pin cushion (inherited from a grandmother I never met) cleaned and refurbished. I made her a new sand-filled top for my new glass head pins, to keep them razor sharp. She sits on top of the cloak fabrics before I started embellishing them; the rope harness was sanded to distress and then painted yellow ocher to match the palette everything got a good pressing after being completed. Of course all openings and edges of the garment were wired to hold position during filming.