Modified half-circle ranger's trekking cloak

By Greg

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 [bocksten cloak], but these aren't as suitable to being used as a complete blanket for sleeping in on their own due to their size, 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 separate 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.

So let's start with the basic half-circle cloak pattern. The distance from the top centerline to the bottom edge should be roughly the distance from your shoulders to ankles. My fabric was 58" wide, so I got two yards, and marked it at center, using the full 58" as this shoulder-to-shin length.

Now what we'll do is modify the half-circle pattern by cutting an imperfect half-circle, of sorts. Not quite circular, and not quite an ellipse, it's almost a horseshoe. The two yards of fabric I bought made this an easy task. I attached a string to the front center edge, and stretched it to the bottommost edge directly opposite. Using this string measurement like a compass, tie a marker onto the string and draw a circle out in both directions until you hit the sides. Then, smooth out the "corners" of this cut as you see necessary, as shown below.

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.

The cloak drapes nicely, like a half-circle should, but you don't have the botom corners dragging on the ground, and the excess material of a half-circle cloak isn't weighing you down...and all of that, without really changing the appearance of a half-circle cloak, at a distance. Wrapping yourself up in it to sleep is a simple matter, but hiking a long distance with the weight on your shoulders isn't bad, either.