Gotta love the ol' cloak discussion. This subject has come up many times, and I've been through four-ish designs in the last several years since getting heavily into this hobby in my endless search for the impossible "all-purpose" cloak, so I figured I'd share my latest "creation" of sorts, which I just finished finalizing, and am now actively using in my overnight kit.
Cloaks are almost ALWAYS one of two things: Heavy, or Flimsy. If your cloak is lightweight (ie. costume grade fabric from JoAnns, etc.), there's a good chance (don't be offended by this if you're one of the few exceptions) that it can and will be torn to ribbons in the woods, and won't really provide any insulation or utilitarian purpose. If your cloak is of a heavier weight, such as a canvas or wool material, it won't generally suffer from that problem, but you may collapse of heat exhaustion instead. Not a pleasant trade-off.
Half-circle, 3/4 circle, and similar round-edged cloaks are lovely, for starters. They drape nicely, they keep their edges up and off of the ground (assuming you don't have them cut
too long), and are kinda what everyone thinks of when they picture a cloak. Unfortunately, they use one whole heck of a lot of fabric. Even just a half circle cloak has to be twice as wide as it is tall (shoulder to bottom edge) to accommodate the shape, and there's a lot of material there that really isn't necessary. 3/4 circle cloaks compound this problem. A 3/4 circle wool cloak can be a solid ten pounds to be carrying around.
Rectangular cloaks have the distinct advantage of using less fabric. A rectangular cloak can be half as wide corner-to-corner as a half-circle cloak, but can still easily wrap completely around the wearer's chest without carrying around all that unnecessary fabric out to the leading edge. Unfortunately, rectangular cloaks have an opposite problem from the circular cloaks...in the middle along your ankles, the edge can be kept clear of the ground relatively easily, but the trailing corners have a tendency to drag. If you make your cloak short enough to consistently keep these corners off the ground, you will find the back center of your cloak so high that the cloak doesn't seem as useful as a blanket anymore.
Now, there
are some short (waist- or thigh-length) cloaks that are useful, to be sure, such as Andy's Watch Cloak off the old meranger.com, or Caedmon's Osnaburg cloak, but these aren't as suitable to being used as a complete blanket for sleeping in on their own, and the point of my revision was to lighten my cloak and remove the need to carry a rolled wool blanket separately at the same time, so we'll put those cloaks in a useful, but unrelated category.
So how do we combine the best of both worlds to form an effective, lightweight, warm, (relatively) attractive, and rugged cloak? I can't promise this to be the end-all, but so far, I'm frighteningly pleased with it.
What I decided to do was cut an imperfect half-circle, of sorts. Not quite circular, and not quite an ellipse, it's almost a horseshoe.
What this does is get the trailing corners of a rectangular cloak up and off of the ground like a half circle would, but it limits the width of the leading edge so you aren't dragging around an unnecessary excess of fabric. I made mine with a heavyweight wool melton, and hiked with it for the first time last month on an 87-degree day, over a linen tunic and wool pants. Did I sweat? Yes. Did it seem unbearable? Absolutely not! I was thrilled. I had gotten to the end of stitching, and thought for sure that I had once again engineered something during the summer that wouldn't see any use until fall, but have been able to wear it around with reasonable comfort into July.
To keep the leading edge's corners from flopping around in front of me, I simply toss them over my shoulders. You can keep one of them free by slipping the other under a quiver strap, or simply tuck them both under your hood...wool sticks to itself; they don't come forward unless I pull on them.
So now, I have no wool blanket strapped to the side of my quiver, so there goes 2-3 pounds, and I'm not wearing a 3/4 circle heavyweight canvas cloak, either, which probably saves me about five pounds more. I almost feel like I'm not carrying enough...it's nice. *smile*
EDIT: I'll take some actual pics of it tonight...didn't mean to be cruel and tease this photo-loving forum with nothing but MS Paint...
