Armour

What happened to the past week? Did time speed up after Thanksgiving? Maybe, all I know is that I blinked and here it is the middle of October.

Since I have been otherwise occupied by things beyond my control, I thought you might enjoy looking at a little something that I worked on a couple of seasons ago. This garment was made for a certain Mr. P.

My info: a sketch- and after a meeting with the actor, the designer told me we needed to make armour that was like a sweater........ hmmm.....and it needed to be as lightweight as I could make it...... light armour....... ok.... and the "kilt" and armour should be attached together so it was an all in one garment.

This is the end result.

In the beginning though, it was a bit of a leap of faith. I didn't know what fabrics we would use although I knew leather would be involved somewhere.

You've got to start somewhere so I started with a bodice of crin like fabric - that wasn't right- too rigid and not sweatery enough.....

I can't go into the full detailed description of the process of getting there, so here's the condensed version:

I made a bodice base from light weight twill, which worked.

The "pecs" were built up with thin layers of furnace filter foam.

Over that was draped a layer of chunky knit-like fabric that we had painted gold. That was caught down by hand to keep it in place.

Over that layer went a layer of brown fishnet type fabric. Same process, draping then catch stitching it by hand.

On top of all that was a grid of leather strips riveted together at the intersection points and then draped on top. Once that was in place the small rivets were put in through all the layers where possible.

The armholes and necklines were finished with facings to the inside and then leather facings were laid on the good side and top-stitched into place.

The fronts and backs were made up separately then joined later.

As an all in one garment, it opens on one shoulder and at both sides for ease of getting into. The sides are boned with spiral steel to keep the closures of large snaps and hooks from collapsing.

The shoulder pauldron on the open side needed to be split and have its own closure.

The "kilt" of leather strips was made up separately then attched later to the inside of the bodice. All the findings/decorations on the "kilt" came in two days before we needed them and they had to be sprayed the right colour and a hole punched in the centre of each one then they were placed and riveted on individually by hand. All 250 of so of them.

The tunic underneath is made of a rich red "slinky" with Swarovski iron- on details that were individually cut out and applied.

Ahhh, finally it was done.............and then we made one in gold.