New Fabric Find Looks Very Promising

I made a run to the fabric store at lunch time today, primarily to pick up some stuff for sewing stretch fabrics together. More on that in a later post.

While I was there, I figured I would peruse the fabrics to see if something caught my eye that might be useful in the cape. I was in luck! I found SOMETHING that looks REALLY promising. It's a twill that is 100% cotton. It's really light, has a nice hand, and looks like it will flow very nicely.



As you can see, my excitement got the better of me, and I wanted to do an adhesion test with the cape I had laid up previously. Keep in mind that the current latex layup in the cape mold was done mainly to clean the mold, and also to get a feel for how many coats of latex I will need to do. So it's not like I was wasting good latex.

The bottom line is that the fabric worked VERY well. It stuck to the latex very nicely, and did not bleed through AT ALL. One of the drawbacks of the stuff I was using before was the bleed through. The latex would push through the fabric and you'd end up with gobs of the stuff on the inner surface of the cape. With this new stuff... not so much.

Not only does it stick well, but because it's 100% cotton, it means it will take dye very nicely. This is critical to me, and is very exciting.

Now that I have this fabric, the next trick is to find it in wide bolt. I was originally looking for gabardine, but almost all the gabardines I found were a poly/cotton blend, which makes dying problematic.

Anyhow, good stuff.

Here's a couple of pictures from Dragon*Con. I'm dressed as Smallville's Clark Kent. Red Jacket. See if you can find me.