The hood is done! It was sadly a result of productive procrastination, but a result is a result! I used the first template a found even after a solid half hour of research and watching videos (which helped me understand how templates fit together) - I guess it speaks to google's accuracy and relevance of results. Turns out it did have quite a lot of flop at the back which I in the end removed (despite liking the flop) because the Skyrim design is more fitted to the back of the head. The one change I haven't made which I intend to experiment with is the opening - as you can see on the character below the opening is more narrow than my design which is quite wide. I'm thinking of making a mini mock test hood just to see how changing the slant and length of the hood side of template influences the hood opening (and watching more videos).
The process:
1. First I cut out the circle for the lower part of the design which the hood attaches to. The design did not specify any measurement for the neck opening so I just did some quick maths based off the length of a loose circle around my neck - like that of a collar. The circumference of my "neck" measurement was 45 cm, and my rearranging the subject of the circumference of a circle formula I could get the radius of my neck! Who said sewing couldn't involve algebra?! The radius of 7.16 cm was actually in that golden zone of loose enough to get the collar over the head whilst still being a relatively small collar (of course this depends on your head size, my sister has a fat head so I'll have to readjust if she wants a hood). Now I have the small and large circle measurements (note - I had to bring it down to about 22 inches because my piece of fabric wasn't quite big enough). So I set about cutting it out. I used a circular pillow to help as a guide on roundness and getting the right angle on my circle from all sides. I cut this out of course and now have my base circular thing which sits on the shoulders.
2. The hood was relatively easy to cut out, I made sure to keep an eye keeping the same ratio as in the picture - I didn't bother trying to print out this guy's template to get the very exact ratios as eyeballing is good enough for tests. I had to cut this out twice of course, and started off with pinning and sewing up the back and top of the hood. After that flipped the shoulder base and hood inside out and pinned the tan-curvey neck side of the hood to it. I started by aligning the back to the back then working out from there placing a pin on the left of the back, then the right, then left, etc to force out kinks in the fabric. This is then flipped the other way out and sewn together. After that I found the hood way way way to floppy at the back and came back, flipped it inside out and took a good portion of the rear, (looking at the far right image) I basically cut from where the blue strip meets the top of the cloth in a gentle curve outwards and back down towards where the curve ends near the blue strip. This was guided by putting on the hood and marking with a pen the curve of the back of my head, and then cutting that curve out with a bit extra fabric along the edge and re-sewing. This worked a lot better as you can see in later images. I also folded the opening of the hood in a couple inches, maybe around 6 to 8 cm. This provided more stability to the front of the hood and helped it jut out more and give the edge strength and a nice curve. However, as stated earlier, I may have to take in the opening and make it narrower to make it accurate to the original design. I'll also fiddle with the shoulder part and how much I want on each side.
View attachment 842155View attachment 842156View attachment 842157View attachment 842158
View attachment 842146View attachment 842147View attachment 842148
Before adjustment:
View attachment 842149View attachment 842154View attachment 842153
After adjustment:
View attachment 842150View attachment 842151View attachment 842152