ChaosHerald

The Jacket and Tabard

The big piece, obviously, is the scale armor. There were a few options I considered for this, depending on how heavy (or noisy) I wanted to make it, how realistic I wanted it to look, how much money I wanted to spend on it, and how much time I wanted to spend painting it.

What I ended up settling on was the thin craft foam you can get at Walmart. We had a friend laser-cut lots and lots of scales out of the foam, each with a scored line down the center that I super-glued to form the curve in the scales, and then I sealed/primed them all with a mixture of black paint and Mod Podge.

Meanwhile, I needed the actual tabard for them to go on, as well as the bolero jacket. I'll get to the tabard in a second, but for the bolero, I bought a suit blazer in my size at Goodwill on a $.99 sale (Mondays, yay), cut the bottom half off to shape it into the bolero shape I needed, and then took it apart at the seams to turn into pattern pieces.

For the jacket, I made some quilted material out of blue fabric and thin fleece, cut out the right shaped pieces using the blazer pattern, and sewed it together. Also, adding all those studs (I think my hands still hurt). I then made a tabard in the right length to go under it, out of a sturdy grey material.

Left: the chest/shoulder portion of the pattern on Galatea, my homemade dress form. Right: the finished jacket and the base fabric for the tabard.

Back to the scales, because craft foam is soft enough for it, I took a few and did a test sewing them onto fabric with a needle I didn't mind dulling (because this WILL dull your needles fast) and making sure they were secure and weren't just going to tear off. Success! So I then took all my primed scales and sewed them onto the tabard in overlapping rows. And this demonstrates really well how the foam color still shows through the primer coat, even though it didn't look that obvious when I was painting each scale. If I were to redo this, I'd see about getting only black foam for the scales to avoid this, but overall it's fine.

Okay, so, all the scales are now sewn onto the tabard, but they're the wrong color. Obvious next step: paint them.

I didn't want to paint them all by hand, though, so I got a can of spray paint (in "hammered metal" color for added texture), taped the tabard down on a big piece of cardboard in the garage, and sprayed the scales to a metallic grey color. Yes, I'm lacking some shadows and weathering, but I'm fine with that.

The blue tape is completely covering as much exposed fabric as possible for the tabard to try to keep it from getting painted.

The next step was to add the blue stripes to the tabard, which I did by taking some blue faux suede I'd picked up for this costume, making the strips and borders, and sewing them in place (thank you, again, to craft foam for being easy to sew when it's this thin).

Not me putting my braid in the way on both photos, go figure.

You can see that the scales don't go all the way up the back. That's because it's going to be covered by the jacket, and I don't plan on wandering around in just the tabard.

So that's the two main clothing parts of the costume. But what about the rest?

Base Layers

Just a quick note about these, because I need things to look good, not just wear this over jeans and a t-shirt or something.

No, actually, I got some comfortable black pants and a dark blue t-shirt to wear under everything, for the parts that would still be visible under this armor.

Gloves, Boots, and Belts

I don't have a photo of just the boots, but it's a pair of inexpensive "riding" boots from Amazon. Quotes because they're good for costume purposes but I don't think they're actually for riding anything. 😅

As for the gloves, those were also an Amazon purchase because I don't like making my own gloves. It's a decent pair of "driving gloves," I think (I'm more likely to believe these are actually for driving...but cars, not cattle).

Not touch-reactive (for touchscreens) and I don't want to put any stitches in these to try to fix that, so I have to make sure a stylus is in my pouch just in case.

Belts are also necessary for cinching the armor around my waist and holding stuff I'll need.

Both are thrifted, though the one on the right is only a belt because it's no longer a purse strap. I'll touch on that again later.

Belt Pouch

Here's the trick to belt pouches for costumes: hit up the thrift store for purses and satchels that look right (or have pockets you can scavenge, at least).

This is just a purse I picked up. It didn't have a strap that I could remove, so instead I cut the strap down and glued/stitched (with upholstery thread) the shorter lengths into a pair of loops I can thread over a belt. Boom, instant belt pouch. Big enough for my phone, a pocket fan, emergency ibuprofen, and a few other necessities.

Waterskin

Okay, so, hydration at a convention is important, but I didn't have any water bottles that coordinated with this costume, nor was I planning to carry around a bigger bag that could hold a non-coordinating water bottle (some of my other costumes are better for this). So I needed something that worked with Warden armor.

I did some searching on the internet, and I've seen a few people make their own waterskins, bota bags, etc. And while searching, I learned that there are such things as "inflatable water bottles." Basically, they roll up for easy storage when empty. So I set about making a waterskin to go with this costume.

First step: find a suitable purse at Goodwill and cannibalize it for materials. I found one in a pretty blue faux leather which seemed perfect, so I bought it, took it apart at the seams, and saved all the hardware just in case I could use it later.

Here we have all the extra bits after I got the faux leather separated into panels. There was some kind of power charger in the purse (interesting), plus a zipper, D-rings, the purse strap (take note), and a zipper pull. The purse strap became the blue belt I hung both the waterskin and my belt pouch from, so they wouldn't have to hang from the belt cinching the armor.

I've also got the water bottle I picked up, and me measuring it against the purse material to draw an outline. Finally, a wooden candle cup from the craft store that my husband helped to router out to make the interior a little larger, to cover the otherwise exposed silicone water bottle spout. We sanded it down really well and then coated it with the same oil and wax that we use on our wooden cutting boards, to keep it food safe.

I ended up sewing a pouch that the water bottle would fit in by top-stitching around the outside of the material, then using leather punches to punch out holes through which I threaded suede cord for reinforcement (and to attach the purse's D-rings to the side of the new pouch).

These D-rings would give me a place to attach a cord so I could hang the pouch from my belt.

Speaking of, here's the finished pouch:

Hair elastics attached to the two flaps loop around a button to keep the pouch closed with the water bottle inside it (but allow for easy opening to refill the bottle without getting the pouch wet), and braided suede cord with a toggle button let me hang it from a belt but also remove it easily so I can take a drink without removing the water bottle from the pouch. The wooden cap hangs by another suede cord from one of the D-rings.

Accessories

There are a few other parts to this costume as well.

First, I didn't want to bother with a helmet, and I love the Arden Blossom "helmet" from DAI, so I decided that my Warden was allowed one too. So. Flower crown! With flowers made of foam from Hobby Lobby (for the decent fake florals section) glued onto a metal headband I've had forever (that has a tendency to snag in hair because it has pretty spiral loops on it, so this covers those up and also fits securely).

And speaking of flowers, my Warden romanced Alistair, and I found this rose (in the Valentine's section at Walmart, I think), so I figured why not add it to the costume?

Finally, while I didn't have a sword at the con, I did manage to find a suitable one at a thrift store with a decent Halloween section a month later, so I picked it up for the costume.

It originally was a bit too long, but the blade separated from the hilt easily enough, allowing me to cut off about three inches without affecting the point. We added a long paint stick inside the sword for stability, and while I had the two halves separated, I did a quick paint job on both. Black primer and then gold dry-brushing on the hilt, followed by a gloss coat on both hilt and blade. After they were reattached, I wrapped the hilt in the same blue suede that's on my tabard.

She's the perfect length and fun to hold. All I need now is to make a sheath for her, and then (time willing), make a shield as well.

And whew. That was a lot. This probably demonstrates pretty well my penchant for (and love of) jury-rigging solutions to cosplay problems (the waterskin especially). Thanks for putting up with it all to get to this point!

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