#build log

Pics 1-2: reference art from donghua official art of Wei wuxians bracers.

Pic 3: making a duct tape and plastic wrap pattern for the hand cover part of my bracers.

Pic 4: making a mockup to check the fit (really glad I did it was entirely too big for my arm initially b/c the base pattern I used was one size).

Pic 5: After ironing on interfacing and sewing right sides together so I can have neat seams on the outside before sewing on my bias tape on the remaining raw edges.

Pic 6: bias tape pinning hell

Pic 7: punching the holes for the eyelets

Pic 8: adding the eyelets

Pic 9: finished “front”/over view of my bracers (using mo’s LWJ fabric as a backdrop lol)

Used a modified version of the Peppermint magazine Everyday Dress pattern to draft mockups until I was happy with the result! Idk why it took me literally 3 mockups for a really simple tunic, but I think I was feeling rusty since i took a really long break after finishing Sakura.

Sewed the tunic out of dark green linen since AX is in July, and I didn't want to deal with synthetic fibers cooking me inside the foam armor + it was more period accurate

I also made the belt here in this picture out of vinyl and secured it with velcro because I'm lazy and was going to cover it up with a fake foam buckle anyways.

Used KamuiCosplay's Knight Breastplate pattern as a base and modified it to shorten the bottom part and make the chest a little flatter since it looked really crazy on me when I first tried it on LOL + I wanted to make sure the armor wasn't reading as too feminine. I also made the chest belts out of the same vinyl I used to make the waist belt.

Made fake topper things for some brown boots I already had. I used the wrong side of some vinyl I had in my stash and then attached them to elastic and tucked them inside the top of the boot before folding them over.

Made the belt buckle and Judeau's throwing knives and spray painted them.

Painted the armor and added a zipper to the side and velcro to the shoulder straps so that I could get in and out of it. (Honestly would not recommend a side zipper bc it was really annoying to zip up tbh. I think next time I'll try velcro maybe?) Sewed the velcro bits and zipper to some 2mm foam before gluing it onto the breastplate with contact cement and it felt pretty secure!

Also for the gloves I bought some leather gloves and cut the fingers off the right hand. (Thank goodness it's part of his canon design because it was so nice to be able to use my phone super easily with the fingerless glove LOL)

Cut and sewed the big knife sheaths out of vinyl. I bought some suede lace and threaded it through some holes I punched in the edge of the sheath to close it up.

Attached the big knife sheaths to the belts with upholstery thread. (Also I forgot to take any progress pictures of them but the shortswords are literally just toy foam swords I bought from Daiso, sanded down the edges, spray painted silver, and then wrapped the hilts in white fabric.)

Ugh okay this is around where I stopped taking pictures because it was like two days before I had to leave for the con 😭 Anyways this is the gauntlet armor and the shoulder armor after I primed them. Both are self-patterned. I decided not to make a piece of the arm armor because I got lazy and didn't think it really made a huge difference + it looked like it would be annoying to rig and uncomfortable.

And the day before the con I finished my gauntlet armor hooray! Unfortunately at the con the contact cement I used to attach the finger pieces started to fail so I did have to make a trip to cosplay repair... I think next time I'll use a stronger glue or maybe even tack them down with matching thread.

Shoulder armor finished yay! (Okay it wasn't actually done in this picture because for some reason I didn't rig it until the day before I had to wear it lol) Rigged the shoulder armor on Friday night and luckily it worked out. Basically did the same method I used for Ingrid where I attached D-rings to the inside of the pauldron and then sewed a strip of fabric with clips on them onto the tunic and clipped them onto the D-rings. Not bad for a rush job but they definitely shifted more than I wanted them to at the con. Definitely going to put more secondary attachment points on my next build with pauldrons.

cue ax bathroom selfie

anyways I'm happy I was able to finish in time! I felt a little pressed for time bc I work fulltime and refuse to pull all-nighters for anything after the damage it used to do to my body in school but Judeau came together nonetheless on the weekends!

here are some pics from the meetup! was so cool to see so many berserk fans in one place!!

also one of the griffiths made some glasses with grass in the lenses and i've only read the berserk manga so I was so confused until I looked it up later and realized it's a reference to the anime opening 😭

Build details:

This is a very simple notebook in a folio size. The pages were created and designed by me in Affinity Publisher with vector images from Pixabay. I had it printed at a chain printshop on a natural linen 24lb paper. Actually, I had it printed twice, because they messed up the orientation and half my pages were upside-down the first time, but they were nice about it and redid it at no extra cost.

The signatures are sewn together with a simple kettle stitch with white waxed polyester thread. Not ideal, and it’s definitely too thick, but it’s all I have for now. I used two cotton tapes, which is maybe overkill for a smallish book like this, but it's good practice. I also experimented with sewn on endpapers, yet another small thing to add a little strength to a book. I'm very happy with how those turned out.

I rounded the spine, and then used a chisel I found at a thrift store to trim the head and tail of the textblock, both firsts for me. I used cotton embroidery thread to hand-sew endbands, another first. I lined the spine with a strip of scrap leather. Normally, in addition the mull, people will just use craft paper as lining, but I had scraps of leather and heard it can work so I tried it.

I decided to try a split-board bind for the first time (good thing I had the tapes!). It’s supposed to give the book a bit of added strength as the covers are more securely attached than in a regular case bind.

It was tricky to get the cover material (combo of bookcloth and paper) on once I had the boards attached, but I fumbled my way through with the help of a Renegade Binderary tutorial and ended up with a functioning book! And I can’t ask for more than that, really.