A Marbled Men's Cravat

I took a little detour in my sewing last week and made something unusual -- a cravat! Finally some menswear ;)

I have been looking through all my cotton scraps in my stash lately, to make a few face masks, and came across a larger piece of this marbled cotton that I had used originally to make this Book Dress. But my husband really liked this fabric, and has been asking for a cravat for ages, so I decided that this was the time.

I used the pattern from The Gentleman's Wardrobe by Vanessa Mooncie. It's pretty simple -- a long tie with pointed ends and with pleats around the neck to allow it to sit smoothly. It's pretty slick and worked very well. The book has limited sizing as I noted in my original review, but the neck size works for my model so I didn't have to make any adjustments that way. It would be easy enough to adjust for a larger neck -- just add some inches in to the centre back.

Because I was working with scraps I did have to make a few adjustments. The cravat pattern is one long piece that is then doubled over, like a waist sash really. But my pieces were shorter chunks, so I added a centre back seam to fit it onto my fabric.I would add one anyhow if my print was directional since otherwise you'll have one end with an upright print and the other with an upside down one.

The other issue I had was that one piece of fabric had a triangular chunk missing, from the original use. I made sure to cut it so that the hole was nearest to the back seam. Then I used some of the smaller scraps to match the print, and just pressed a very narrow edge under on the main piece and topstitched the scrap filler in. Because it's near the back and subsequently pleated you can't notice it at all on the finished project.

The recommended fabric for this project is a drapier, silky fabric, but this light quilting cotton worked quite well anyhow. It was a fun challenge using scraps and making something that I wasn't planning on making! I really like the use of pleats to narrow the neck section; it gives this some heft and my husband states that it is comfortable to wear. He also enjoyed this project, and I hope that he will actually be able to wear this somewhere someday.