Costume-Making 101: Another Week Closer to Comic-Con…

Hello again my fellow costume nerds and welcome to the weekly update of the road to Comic-Con in London at the end of this month.  Did I read that correctly?  The end of this month?  Holy crap, no time to stand around asking questions, let’s get on with the step-by-step of my friend Scott’s new shoulder armour!

Gentleman, to the boats!

So I felt bad that Scott really had nothing new to take to Comic-Con this time around following a thorough re-design of my step-daughter’s and my costumes.  The mannequin armour was on the back-burner due to timing issues, so I set to designing a new piece of armour for him.  I started out with the excellent patterns provided by Alex over at The Crystal Anvil – check out his website at www.lederkraft.com – choosing the Justicar shoulder armour as a base after talking through the options with the client.  That’s you Scott.

So, some complicated maths later I tiled and printed up the patterns, leaving myself this as a starting point.  You can tell it was late...

After some cutting, gluing, cursing, removing glue from the carpet, cutting again and sticky tape, I ended up with the basic pattern pieces cut.  Now I’m never one to stick to a brief or pattern, so I decided to change things up a little.  I’d be omitting the arm guard tassets for now; these could be added later if there was time, so I was left with the main shoulder piece, the shoulder extension and the standing haute plate.

I knew that I wanted to double layer these parts from the faux leather I had on hand, so hopefully this would provide enough body to make them a little more substantial.  My way of working with this vinyl is to cut my pieces with around a 10mm excess that I can fold back and glue to create a clean outer line without the need to hem it – the faux leather can get fragile if you sew too many lines into it.

To demonstrate this, here’s a handy picture:

And from the right side, a clean silhouette with no stitching lines  You need patience and A LOT of superglue for this.  Luckily, I have superglue:

Before joining the two halves of the main shoulder together, I added the top detail piece, prepared the same way and glued down ready for stitching.  As shown here:

And with the stitching in place to keep it secure.  It’s worth noting that I picked up a really heavy linen thread for this project to give some more definition to the stitch lines and to give it a heavier look.  Nice isn’t it?

And with the backing to the main shoulder piece in place:

After joining the two halves of the main shoulder together and stitching it, I set about constructing the shoulder extension, which was put together in exactly the same way, two layers glue-hemmed and stitched.  Here’s how it looked before being attached (central rivet in place to hold the center line):

When it came to attaching the shoulder extension, I placed the main piece over my mannequin so I could manoeuvre it around in three dimensions to get the look just right.  After marking with pins and punching holes, I riveted the extension to the main body with two-piece tubular rivets.  Three was plenty, one on each the front and back, the third on top.  A lot, you might say, like this, where you can already see the three-dimensional shape it holds unaided:

And in situ to show how it will look when worn.  Three rivets was plenty to keep the shape as the fake leather is remarkably light for its thickness:

Lastly the haute plate (or sword-breaker, as some call it), which was cut exactly from the pattern and put together as per the rest of the pieces.  I punched holes in each corner and arranged it by eye while the whole piece was on the mannequin, resulting in this:

Which I was very happy with.  Two press studs later and its ready for strapping:

Alas I can’t hang around here all night; I’ve got things to make and people to shout at and other things to panic about.  Plus there’s beer in the fridge that needs drinking.

More to come, check back regularly for inspiring add-ons or extra posts as usual.  Or not, I’m busy you know.  Comments, criticism and (especially) praise welcomed as always!

Until next time, cheers all.