#jack's jacket project

We had a fabulous time visiting Batuu yesterday! Our outfits were comfortable and functional and well suited to what turned out to be a relatively cold and cloudy day in southern California. Disney cast members definitely seemed to interact with us more because we made the effort to dress up, and we got some lovely compliments from other guests, too. We were even gifted some BSO credit coins by random strangers who liked our outfits!

It was Jack's first visit to Batuu, and while I did get to spend a little bit of time there with my mom in October, this was my first opportunity to really explore the entire area, browse through the shops, and sample all the food and drinks available. It was at least as cool as my first impression of it back in October, and Jack was impressed and delighted by all of it. We spent a good portion of the day just admiring all the details and world-building and excellent sets.

Jack has requested no photos, but I did manage to snag this pic of him blocking the camera like a victim of the paparazzi, lol.

But look at those pleats! Both Jack and I are so pleased with how they turned out. Several of the Resistance jackets on display in the Rise of the Resistance queue had similar pleat details, and it was fun to look at them up close.

Over this last weekend and all the way up to late Monday night, I was able to add a few last details to our outfits. I finally adjusted the chain length of my dangley earrings and glued the leather cording wraps to the back of my kyber crystal necklace so that it wouldn't slip out. While I had the glue out, I figured I'd take a stab at making some spat-type things to cover the lacings of my tall Doc Marten boots. I was completely winging it from start to finish, but I'm really happy with how they turned out!

The spats are made from some left over suede I've had in my stash for literally more than 20 years now -- it's been used for an Aragorn vest for Jack, a couple of bags for me, and the inner layers of the big wedge shaped piece on my Oswin belt. And I still have some left over! Maybe I'll make myself a belt pouch to match these spats at some point in the future.

The narrow end of each spat tucks under the laces closest to the toe of my boot, and theoretically secures to itself with a hook and eye, though I found the hook didn't really hold from that angle, and really wasn't necessary anyway. The straps then velcro around the back of my leg, at the lowest point of the bend of my ankle, and right at the top of the boot, so that the strap sits just above the top edge of the boot in the back, which helps keep it from slipping down.

To make these I really just draped scrap suede on my boot while wearing it, started cutting it to the shape I thought might make sense, then copied that over for a second spat. I measured how much I would need for the straps and how much of an overlap I wanted for the velcro, then cut out all those pieces and glued them together using E6000 -- which works wonderful for adhering velcro to suede and suede to suede, but is a bit more iffy with the metal hooks and eyes (one eye popped off when I was taking off the spat at the end of the night, but since it wasn't staying hooked anyway, I'm not fussed).

Despite being such a quick off-the-cuff project, the spats worked out great, and added that last little bit to my outfit by covering the laces of my boots. They're visible in the third photo, the full-length shot in front of the door (and in the video below), and I think they add an understated bit of texture difference in all the black-on-black there, in addition to obscuring the modern look of the boots a bit.

Besides those detail bits for me, I also made a pair of little pockets for Jack's jacket, to hold 'code cylinders'. It's a tiny detail that really makes the jacket look that much more Star Wars-y, and the cylinders themselves are empty and their tops unscrew, so the space can actually be functional, too. (Currently they're filled with gum!)

And at Jack's request, I threw together a quick insert for the zipper section on his collar that used to hold the hood before we removed it. The hood was making the collar too puffy, but without it the collar didn't have enough body to stand up on its own.

I took some measurements, then cut a piece of cotton duck canvas (that I had originally bought to cover the zippers on my Moment vest, before I changed gears and made the Batuu vest instead) to the right length and about three times the height of the interior of the hood section. I did a simple zigzag tri-fold on the height, ironed it flat, and marked some guide lines perpendicular to the length. Then it was just a simple process of quilting the three layers together by machine sewing in short vertical rows ~1cm apart.

The quilting gave the canvas even more stiffness, and after that point it absolutely did not want to fold or droop along the short vertical axis. I slipped it into the former hood pocket (after snipping one corner to fit around the snap I hadn't accounted for), zipped it closed, and gave the whole collar area a quick pressing. It's removable if we ever need to, completely washable, and keeps the collar standing upright without looking too stiff. Jack was very happy with the result.

With our outfits finally done, we headed into the park around mid-morning, with a plan to stay late. I wasn't quite sure what to expect with Batuu Bounding at Disneyland (which is notoriously a bit more hit-and-miss than Batuu East, in Florida), but we got through security without incident and through the rest of the park without anyone commenting on our outfits. We saw someone else wearing the same leather-look leggings as me, and a guy wearing similar jacket and pants to Jack (but without the pleating), which made us feel like we didn't look too weird, by general Disneyland standards.

Once we were in Batuu, though, our bounding definitely got noticed more. A couple of fellow guests complemented our outfits (including the kind strangers who gave us the coins!), and cast members seemed way more interested in interacting with us in-character. I got to bring up a bit about the history I'd made up for Samæni Ray -- which led to one cast member later referring to me and Jack as "my friends from Denon!" All of the prep and character design made it a lot easier to think on my feet in those little improv interactions.

One cast member in particular kept finding us throughout the day, just suddenly appearing out of nowhere it felt like, and kept trying to sell us a speederbike that totally wasn't a broken down lemon.

Later in the day, he kind of sold us out to Kylo Ren and a pair of stormtroopers (but like, in a fun way, lol) which led to an intense interaction with Kylo Ren right up in both my face and Jack's. Kylo Ren is tall, and the voice and the mask and the body language was all perfect up close. There was a bit of nervous laughter on our part, but we kept our cool and convinced Ren that that since we'd only just arrived on Batuu from Denon, we couldn't possibly know anything about any Resistance activity in Black Spire Outpost.

We were way too in the moment to get any photos, but because we were dressed up and Kylo Ren was so much up in our faces, we did draw a bit of a crowd, so for all I know other people may have taken pictures or videos of the event, lol. My family has a saying about 'look hard' rather than take photos, and it was definitely that for us.

Overall the whole day was wonderful, and we ended up spending nearly 12 hours in Batuu without leaving once. I got to pilot the Falcon multiple times (though I can't really say I've gotten any better at it, lol), and got to try out gunner and engineer, too. We managed to ride Rise of the Resistance both during the day and again after dark, explore every part of Black Spire Outpost in detail, learn to play Sabacc with a cast member, have drinks at Oga's, and eat a bunch of really tasty, really well-presented food.

All together it was an excellent, excellent birthday. And we're already talking about when we might want to go back again.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and when I saw this beam of sunlight hitting it where it was hanging in the closet, I couldn't help but take a couple of photos lol.

The panels run from the edge of the stand up collar to the edge of the cuffs on both sleeves. Jack pretty much always wears the jacket with the cuffs turned back, but I finished the edges so that it looks good if he's wearing it unfolded, too.

I think the effect is wonderfully Star Wars-y without being too weird looking. Jack can wear the jacket with regular outfits and the pleating will be just a cool detail. He's excited about wearing it, both to Batuu and just in general, and really what better measure of successful sewing is there than that?

The pleated fabric continues to photograph a bit more brown than it looks in real life, though I did manage to get a photo in natural sunlight where the color is pretty accurate:

We've started talking about what other little details or greeblies we might want to add to the jacket before we go to Batuu on Tuesday. Top contender at the moment is adding a little pocket above one of the top flap pockets, designed to hold a couple little code cylinders (just left over bits from when I made my Oswin Oswald belt).

One of the first modifications we made to this jacket was to cut out the hood that used to live stuffed inside the zipper on the back of the collar -- mostly to reduce the puffy bulk in the collar, but it also means that I have some extra fabric that matches the jacket exactly. I also have more of the fabric from the pleated panel if we decide to add a little contrast element.

But first! I need to get all the hooks and eyes sewn onto my vest. Yesterday I marked out the placement for the eye side of the five that surround the zipper (and thus are actually functional), and sewed on the hook half of the one that will secure the underlap and make zipping up the zipper easier. Once I've got these marked out eyes sewn on, I'll need to put the vest on again to check where the corresponding hooks should go on the underside of the overlap.

Attaching the hook on the underlap went pretty quickly and feels nice and secure, so I'm hoping I can get through at least most of the hooks and eyes today. Putting on the hooks and eyes is the very last step for the vest, as I don't plan to add any additional details or greeblies. Nearly there!

A little preview of my next sewing project: box pleats!

This is the first step in some detail work for the Batuu Bounding outfits for me and Jack for my birthday outing next month. I'm pleating ~200" a half inch at a time, so there's a lot more of this to go. I did a few test strips out of different fabrics before Jack and I settled on this one, and I'm definitely getting faster at the box pleats the more of them I do. Since I took the picture above, I've sewn the first 33 pleats from the first ~52" of the first strip, ironed the next 33 into place, and pinned 18 of those down thus far. I might be able to finish the whole 104" strip tonight, or at least have it ready to sew down first thing tomorrow.

Once I had decided against adding additional pockets, I was able to move on to the next step: finishing all the edges and attaching the lining to the exterior in preparation for getting the zipper in place. I turned under the armscyes of the lining and the exterior separately, both using a blue lace hem tape that I originally bought to go with this fabric back in 2016. Eventually I'll top-stitch them together with the hem tape sandwiched invisibly between the exterior and the lining, but for now they're finished enough to allow me to try the vest on without fraying the armscyes.

It took me awhile to think through all the steps for attaching the zipper, with all the asymmetry and overlapping and exterior and lining, while also not wanting the zipper to show from the outside at all. Eventually I figured out that I would need the underlap (left front) to be completely sewn together with the edges finished before I could attach the zipper to that side -- but I would need the overlap (right front) to not be sewn together yet, so that I could attach the zipper just to the lining.

With that finally figured out, I put the lining and the exterior together with right/finished sides together, lined up all the seams and notches carefully, then pinned the edges together from the left (underlap side) shoulder, down the center front of the underlap, and around the lower edge of the vest all the way around to the bottom corner of the center front on the overlapping right side of the vest.

After a lot of ironing to get all of that to lay flat when right side out, I was able to trim the center front edge of the overlap to be nice and clean and straight again. When I drafted the center front panels, I modified that right side to have an additional ~2" of width past where I wanted the zipper to be, specifically so there would be a built-in flap to cover over the zipper. Remember: no visible zippers in Star Wars!

Once I had the overlap panels of both the lining and the exterior all trued up, I marked the center front line on the lining side (in the below pic, the angled line going from lower left to upper right), laid half of the separating zipper onto the fabric so that the teeth were lined up with where the center front line met the lower edge of the vest, then measured from the outside edge of the zipper ribbon to the cut edge of the overlap panel. It was just about 7cm away from that edge, so I measured that distance all the way up (past the dashed line that marked the underbust elevation) and drew a nice crisp line with my chalk pen.

That gave me an easy line to follow when sewing the zipper to the inside/lining of the overlapping flap. Since I hadn't sewn the edge of that panel together yet, I was able to move the exterior layer out of the way and sew the zipper only to the lining, for now. I sewed one line of stitching just slightly in from the outside edge of the zipper ribbon, then did a second pass about halfway between the edge and the zipper teeth. It's on there nice and secure, but has a bit of room to separate from the fabric while it's being zipped, so it doesn't get fiddly.

After that, it was just a matter of pinning the other side of the zipper to the lower front corner of the underlap (this time on the exterior side of the fabric, where it faces the lining of the overlap), then try it on with the rest of my Batuu Bounding outfit and pin the underlap side of the zipper until I had the fit I wanted.

I sewed down that side to match the overlap panel side of the zipper, then tried everything on again to double-check the fit. It was a bit weird with the exterior of the overlap flap still unattached, but it fit well enough that I decided to sew the edges of that overlap flap from the lower corner up to the shoulder seam. The back of the neckline is still open, and the armscyes have been turned under but not attached to each other yet, so I can turn the whole thing right side out by pulling it through the back of the neck. With all that ironed and the zipper zipped up, the vest looks like this currently:

Folding back the outer edge of the overlap reveals the zipper. Because of all the overlapping and underlapping, the zipper is just top-stitched in place. It was way more mind-bending to figure out where everything needed to be placed to get this look, but way easier to actually sew on than, say, an invisible zipper set into a seam.

At this point I was able to try on the vest (with my Jyn Erso sweatshirt) and get a pretty good idea of the overall look. I still want to do a bunch of top-stitching both for accent and to help everything lay flat, but even with that I think I'm going to need something to keep the flap over the zipper from coming open.

I looked at a bunch of options for Star Wars-y looking buckles, settled on one I liked the best, then cut the basic size of them out of paper and taped five of them to the outside of the overlap just to get a basic idea of how it would look. I got Jack to weigh in on it too, and we both felt that the buckles were reducing the sleekness of the vest, and weirdly pushing it more towards an Imperial/First Order sort of look. My character isn't an out-and-out rebel, but she doesn't side with the First Order either. I pulled the taped on paper off again, and both Jack and I felt that that was the significantly better look.

But since I knew I still wanted some sort of closures to keep the flap down -- including one at the top left shoulder, that will hang open most of the time, along the lines of Han Solo's and Cassian Andor's shirts (and a bunch of others, this sort of overlap detail shows up frequently all throughout the franchise) and thus be visible where it hangs open.

I ended up finding these slightly unusual looking hooks-and-eyes that I think will provide a nice, nearly invisible look through the torso of the vest, but not look totally out of place on the flap edge that's hanging open. Bix's fitted coat has a similar closure of just barely visible, just slightly odd hooks and eyes, so I feel like I'm in good company there. They should arrive tomorrow, giving me enough time to hopefully get some of the top-stitching done before then.

That top-stitching is the next step, and one of the last things I need to do for this vest project. I want to top-stitch just inside all the finished edges, including the armscyes, and on each side of each of the seams, probably 2-3mm away from the edge and the seamline. That's going to involve getting everything lined up correctly and all the seam allowances lying flat inside the space between the exterior and the lining, but I think the effect will be totally worth it, both for the smoother fit and the subtle visual interest.

After that, I'll have some handsewing to do to invisibly anchor the zipper to the exterior of the overlap panel and to attach the hooks and eyes, once they arrive. The very last thing I'll do on this project is decide if I want a little stand-up half collar that ends somewhere on top of the shoulder, a bit like the one on Jyn Erso's vest.

I'm pretty sure I want a collar like that, the question is just if I need to lower the neckline in the back first, and then how far forward on the shoulder I should bring the collar. Once I've decided on that, I'll cut it out in two layers, lining and exterior, and sew the outside edges together. Then I'll be able to sew the lower edge of the exterior to the back of the neckline, and hand-sew the lining lower edge to fully encase all the raw edges. I did something similar with the Moment vest, and it comes together pretty quickly. I think I should be able to have the vest completely done by this time next week without much trouble. Hopefully.

Alongside working on my vest, I've been continuing to hand-sew the pleated panels onto Jack's jacket. In the tags on my last sewing update, I mentioned that I had about 5" still to go on the first panel. I was in the really annoying section in the middle of the sleeve where I really had to put my whole arm into the sleeve just to pass the needle through, and it was slow-going. I had to make myself push through that annoying section, rather than continue to put it off.

Eventually I worked my way all the way down to the cuff, cut off the excess from the pleated panel, turn under the edges of the lowest pleat, and hand-sew that into place. I am so pleased with how it turned out, but to keep Jack from making jokes about only having one sleeve done (and so that I wouldn't find myself with time to hand-sew and nothing ready to sew), I quickly pushed on to getting the second pleated strip started. I took a bunch of measurements from the finished sleeve and transferred them to the second sleeve, pinned the pleated panel into place, and had Jack try it on just to double-check the placement.

I was able to tear through the upper section of that second panel, between my increased speed and confidence in my method of hand-sewing this, the easy access through the neck side of the jacket, and a couple of long-ass work meetings where I was basically just there to listen in and take notes every now and then. As of posting this, I'm about halfway through with the second panel, and starting to get into that annoying section of the sleeve again.

The effect of the pleated panels on both sleeves is just so cool that I will definitely be getting photos of the jacket on Jack at some point, either on our Disneyland day or during a try-on before that. He's somewhat allergic to photos, but damn it I'm proud of how this looks, and I want to show it off. I've been calling it a 'sewist flex' from the very beginning -- look at what I can do, look at how cool and Star Wars-y it is -- and I'm really looking forward to sending this beauty out into the world in all its epicness.

I also had to finally make a decision about adding a little stand up collar to the back half of the neckline, but after playing around with some scrap pieces and holding them up to myself in the mirror, I decided I actually like the look of the vest better without a collar -- and it'll interfere less with my hooded wrap, too. I didn't take a picture of the back neckline until after all the top-stitching was done, but now that it's all finished it looks like this:

But back to the top-stitching! With the lining and the exterior attached to each other last week, doing the top-stitching around the edges was easy, but even for a fairly small vest it just seemed to go on and on, lol. Once that was done, I had to carefully line up all seams so that the lining and exterior matched before I could top-stitch around the seams. That process was time consuming too, requiring a lot of precision pinning and re-pinning, and in the middle of it I ran out of thread and had to wait for more to be delivered.

I also had to stop each of the lines of top-stitching about an inch shy of the armscyes, so that I would have wiggle room to carefully line up the lining and exterior layers of the armscyes, too. Getting the armscyes to match involved a lot of re-folding and ironing and pinning, but I was finally able to top-stitch the two layers together, hiding the lace hem tape that I'd previously finished the armscyes with. Only then was I able to finish the top-stitching along the seams up to the edge with the armscyes.

In every place where the top-stitching along the seams came to the top-stitching along the edges, I was careful not to cross that line, just come right up to it. It's a tiny detail that no one will ever notice, but I think it adds to the tailored look of the vest.

I also didn't want to do any back-stitching or have any place in the top-stitching with two stitches stacked on top of each other, so I had to tie off each line of stitching and then hide the long ends of the threads inside the space between the exterior and the lining. That was worthwhile, and not too obnoxious for the long stretches of top-stitching. But filling in all those ~1" long gaps I'd left around the armscyes created a ton of thread ends to deal with. 32 in total, if my off-the-top-of-my-head math is right, but it certainly felt like more while I was working my way through each fiddly step.

But the end result is super clean and even I can't pick out where one line of stitching ended and the next one picked up. And with that, all the machine sewing on the vest is DONE!

The vest is totally wearable as-is, but sewing on some hooks and eyes will help the overlap and underlap flaps stay in place, so I think it's worth doing. The interesting looking hooks and eyes I ordered arrived and will be perfect for my needs, I think.

While I had good amount of daylight today, I tried the vest on with my Jyn Erso sweatshirt and the leather-look leggings I'll be wearing with the outfit, and used pins to mark out where I want the two most important clips to sit -- the one at the underbust, and the one just above the end of the zipper at the midbust. The spacing of those two will decide the spacing for the rest of the hooks and eyes.

In the pic below I have the hooks and eyes sitting on top of the placement for the underbust pair, but most of these will be hidden under the overlap. Though, hmm, now that I've said that, maybe I should play around with keeping these visible? Hmm.

I also used pins to mark where the edges of the overlap end, including at the upper corner. I'm going to attach a hook and eye there so that I can close the overlap all the way up, but mostly I'll just let that bit hang open (like the roguish scoundrel that I am). Even if I hide the rest of the hooks and eyes, the exposed pair will be a bit of texture and realism, without breaking the no-visible-zippers-in-Star-Wars rule.

The actual hand-sewing of each hook and eye shouldn't take too long, but getting them all placed is going to be the difficult part. To get everything to lay smooth, I may have to try the vest on to get the placement correct. I'm really happy with how it looks currently, but I think the hooks and eyes will really add that last finishing touch.

Besides the vest, I'm continuing to work on attaching the pleated panel to Jack's jacket, little by little. I am nearly through the most difficult part in the middle of the sleeve where I have to stick my whole arm into the sleeve from both directions just to move the needle through the fabric. My experience with the first sleeve was that the last stretch went much faster once I got past that annoying section. Hopefully I can finish the whole thing in the next day or two.

Top third or so of the pleated panel is sewn down!

I tried out a couple of different methods for handsewing this to the shoulder and sleeve, but after a few inches of each, the 'stitch in the ditch' method was the clear winner. It's basically invisible, and lets the piping stand up as it ought to. I'm doing a stitch about every 1/8th inch, and keeping most of the distance on the top so that the stitches inside the sleeve are as small as possible, and won't get caught on things. I'm getting faster with the technique, so I'm hoping to buzz through the rest of this sleeve and the other one over the next few days.

But I'm also going to be interspersing this sewing with starting on my vest scratch build. I was able to find the pattern I made for my vest for The Moment way back in 2014 (it was exactly where I thought it would be, hurrah for keeping old patterns), and I spent some time staring at the existing vest in the mirror and pin-marking the changes I would like to make.

There are enough small changes that I'm going to just draft a new version of the pattern using the old one as a guide. But there are only the four main body pieces that really need re-drafting, and once it's something I can try on then I'll figure out how I'm doing the new collar (so it doesn't look so much like a motorcycle jacket), and I might just drape the new collar on me while I'm wearing the in-progress vest.

Over the weekend I also went though my stash looking for fabrics that have enough yardage (or at least big pieces) to cut out the body of the vest, and after comparing all those to the pieces I know I'll definitely be wearing as part of my Batuu Bound -- gray hooded wrap, brown leather belt/bag/gloves, and black leather-look leggings -- with Jack's help I decided on some lovely dark navy linen that I've had in my stash for years, left over from a dress project. It's on the heavier side for linens, but not quite as stiff as the canvas the Moment vest is made from, but I think it'll work nicely.

I'm going to stick with the basic lines from the Moment vest, including the diagonal cross-body closure. After noodling on this for a week or more, what I've decided to do is a shorter zipper that ends around underbust level or just slightly higher, and then a flap over that with either no visible closures, or some cool looking Star Wars-y buckles or something. I have a few ideas for that, but I won't make any decisions until I can try the new vest on. The separating zipper and the thread for this project have been ordered and should arrive before I'm anywhere close to needing them. Pics on this whole vest project as it develops.

Beyond that, I need to add a tiny dot of glue to a pendant that I made (in the upper left of the photo -- it looks a bit like Jyn Erso's kyber crystal necklace, but smaller with more of a blue tone to it) to make sure the wrappings stay attached. I still want to figure out something to cover the lacings of my big Doc Martens, either wraps over the whole boot or a suede panel that snaps onto the lacings or something of that sort. I've started to gather other accessories, and there are a couple of things I want to order (in particular my Captain's License, once I can settle on a name and spelling for my OC, lol).

I have a long sleeve shirt to go under the vest that works with my color pallet, and an idea (and fabric) for another shirt I could sew, but the weather has been so all over the place lately (80 degrees and sunny! no wait, 60 degrees and rainy!) that I don't want to put too much effort into the shirt until I've got a better idea of the weather we'll have 4 weeks from now. Finishing Jack's jacket and making my vest are definitely the priorities.

And pinned all the way down!

After that, I made some matching piping with 2mm cotton macrame cord, then sewed the raw edges of the piping and the raw edges of the pleating together, and trimmed all but the outermost layer of the seam allowance down to just under a quarter inch, so that I can flat-fell the raw edges to the underside:

First I whip-stitch the ~1/4" trimmed edge down, then fold the untrimmed seam allowance down over top of it and whip-stitch it into place as well. I've been careful to only catch the edge of the underside of each box pleat as I've been going, so none of the stitches show on the outside at all. It results in a nice finished look on the right side, about 2" wide overall.

Currently I have one 36" strip completely done, and the other just past halfway done:

It was slow-going at first, especially until I realized I could kind of pull on the piping to get it to curl outwards and lay flat, rather than trying to iron it into submission. I've gotten into a much faster rhythm with the handsewing just in the last day or so, and figure I'll be able to finish this step sometime today.

The side of the fabric we've designated as the 'right' side (lower strip in the above image) is slightly darker and more matte than the 'wrong' side. It's photographing as slightly more brown than it is in real life, because of the afternoon sunlight coming in through the yellow curtains near my sewing table, but in reality it's a nice dark olive green with a twill type weave.

The (real) color is just slightly darker, but close in color, to the jacket that it'll get applied to in the next step of this process:

Quite a few jackets in the Star Wars universe have this sort of pleated trim on the shoulders and sleeves -- everything from the one Luke wears in the throne room scene at the end of A New Hope, to Poe and Finn's jacket in The Force Awakens, to a whole bunch of outwear in the Disney+ Andor show. Most of them have a single, more shingle-style pleat, but there are a few examples of box pleats too. Some of the screen-used jackets look like the pleating was sewn directly into the seam during the construction of the jacket, but others have this same sort of piping detail and may have been sewn into a seam during the sleeve construction or added on top later:

Finn's in particular looks to me like it's more sitting on top of the sleeve than part of the sleeve. But regardless of how the screen-used jackets were made, I'm modifying a 5+ year old Old Navy jacket, so I'm going to add the pleating and piping on top of the original sleeve without cutting it open, lol.

I've got enough length in each of the two 36" long strips to go from the edge of the collar to the edge of the sleeve cuff, with neatly turned under edges, and probably have a little bit left over from each. Once I finish handsewing the edges of this second strip, the next step will be to pin the strips into place on the jacket (probably while Jack is wearing it initially, so we can get the placement right), and then hand-sew the edges down nice and neat, with no visible stitches or gaps or bubbling between the piping and the sleeve.

After that, Jack and I are going to decide together if there are any other additions we'd like to make to this jacket to Star Wars-ify it more, like pockets or loops for code cylinders, a pocket to slide a communication greeblie into place, or any other little bits. We may make some similar small modifications to the pants he'll be wearing (a nice mustard-y tan pair of cotton moto jeans), and the other night I took a break from handsewing the raw edges of the pleats to remove the buttons and sew up the buttonholes of the henley shirt that recently arrived. Without its buttons or buttonholes the shirt looks very much like Han Solo's shirt in A New Hope, so the whole outfit is really coming together well.

Meanwhile I've also been noodling on my outfit and some details or alterations I want to make to it. Currently it consists of the hooded wrap I sewed earlier this month, the vest from my Moment cosplay, one long-sleeve shirt or another, my Wasteland Weekend fingerless leather gloves, black leather-look leggings, my big stompy everyday-wear black Doc Marten Triumph 1914s, a brown leather belt, and my brown leather crossbody bag. It's a nice combination of brown, black, and gray, which suits both the Star Wars aesthetic and the sort of character I'm trying to portray.

I'm pretty happy with the look over all, but I've been trying to decide about the vest in particular. I love the fit of it (zipped up, unlike how I wear it as The Moment) and the layering effect with a long-sleeve shirt and the hooded wrap. Buuut the color doesn't feel quite right, it feels too clean for Star Wars in general, and the zippers are pretty prominent, especially the long one that holds it closed. I'm not sure that I want to permanently modify it at all, since I do still like to wear my Moment cosplay. It's just sort of 'fine' as it is now, and could be upgraded to 'pretty good' with the addition of a flap over at least most of the visible zipper areas.

But if I have time in the next month before our Disneyland day, I'd like to upgrade that piece of the outfit to 'excellent' if I can possibly manage it. I should still have the pattern for the original vest around here somewhere, and I've been thinking about what I'd want to change from the original if I was to just make it again from scratch -- color, a much more hidden zipper, maybe a slightly differently shaped collar, that sort of thing. Seeing if I can find that pattern, and then seeing what fabric I have on hand that would work for a scratch build, is one of the things I'm hoping to get to this weekend.

Besides that, I've also fallen into a bit of a rabbit hole when it comes to original character creation, because I think it would be fun to order this Captain's Accreditation License from Etsy, but that would mean actually deciding on all the info that would need to go onto that prop before I can order it. I think I'm nearly there -- I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos about Star Wars planets and ships and such while I've been handsewing, lol -- and those details have been making my whole character come into better focus, too.