Leather Armor Tutorial

So I don't have any quality photos of my Renaissance Festival costume at this time, but I do have a few cruddy phone shots that might satiate your curiosity for the time being. I also have some quick tutorials on how I made my leather armor. Interested? I thought so.

As far as the costume goes, I just have to make my accessories and I'll be done. That includes making a couple of bags to carry on my waist and a bunch of animal bones. Yeah, animal bones. I'm thinking of not wearing the scarf because the composition works so much better without it.

Lets talk about how to make leather armor, shall we?

Leather Armor Tutorial

The disclaimer. I know absolutely nothing about working with leather. Also, I didn't have the right tools to put this together, but I thought I stumbled on some neat tricks that you guys might like to know about.

I went onto etsy.com and ordered a bunch of leather scraps. Try to go for lots that have larger scrap pieces. It doesn't matter how thick the leather is, but keep in mind that thin leather is much easier to work with and put together. 

Materials:

Asymmetrical lace in the back, woo!

• Leather (big scraps)
• Eyelets
• Leather lace or ribbon
• Paper Brads or other hardware to secure the leather
• Chalk or other marking tool
• Exacto Knife, hammer, scissors hot glue etc.
• Fur, bones or other misc. scraps
• Preferably a dress form

To the right of the materials list, you can see what the chest piece and belt look like from the back. I was really proud of the asymmetrical lace up back when I drafted it on my duct tape form. Its actually really easy to do. Below you can see the construction of the front in more detail. 

Step 1: Draft your Pattern for the Bodice

Figure 1

Select some leather scraps that will cover your chest. They do not need to be able to wrap all the way around your torso. Wrap this piece around the chest of your dress form. Let the leather naturally curve around the form, with as little wrinkling as possible.

Even though I'm relatively small chested, I still needed to create a seam for the leather bodice to fit properly. I was going for a rugged, asymmetrical look so I only made a seam for one breast. If you are larger chested, I highly suggest doing a seam on both breast.

Create your seams and pin other leather pieces onto the dress form until it wraps around the torso and there is a space for lacing. (You won't be able to get it on or off without lacing, so keep that in mind.)

Use a piece of chalk to mark where your seams are and where your leather pieces connect. 

Step 2: Cut Seams

Take your bodice off of the dress form and cut any seams. I completely removed any seam allowance from one seam and then left a 1/2 in. seam allowance on the other seam. This allowed me to overlap the leather and have the seams meet perfectly.

Figure 2

Step 3: Connect the Seams

For this step you will need metal brads, the kind that you use to hold or embellish paper. I don't know if they make any specifically for leather. If you can, use actual hardware meant for leather. Otherwise, paper brads are a very cheap alternative that do a surprisingly good job at holding leather together. Remember, this is a cheap and easy alternative. If you want an authentic piece, go authentic.

Mark where you want your brads to go on your top piece of leather. Your top piece should be the piece of leather that you completely cut off the seam allowance, allowing the bottom piece of leather to overlap underneath and hide the seam allowance.

Use an exacto knife to cut a small, horizontal line into both layers of leather. I found that cutting a hole in the top layer, inserting my brad, then lining up my two layers of leather and cutting the hole in the bottom piece of leather gave me a better seam. 

Insert your brad through both pieces of leather, make sure you are matching up your seam. You will need to fight with the leather and pull it into place since you are working along a curved seam.

Figure 3

The back of the leather will look a little bit like something in Figure 4. You want the brads to be vertical so they are not susceptible to the tugging and pulling of the leather armor around your chest. 

Figure 4

The finished product will look something like Figure 5. If your seam doesn't lay flat, that's a good sign because that's where your boob is supposed to go.

Figure 5

Step 4: Repeat

Repeat Step 3 and attach the other leather pieces to your armor according to where you previously marked with chalk. Always keep your brads oriented vertical (which means cutting a horizontal slit). 

Figure 6

I didn't take pictures of the eyelet/lacing process but if you buy eyelets they usually come with instruction on how to apply them. Just make sure they are deep enough to go through the leather and large enough to string lacing through them.

Once you have all your pieces attached, try them on. If you find that its too tight or too loose, the awesome thing about the brads is that they are extremely easy to remove and reposition. 

I found that my dress form is a little wide because one of her seam busted when I first made her (her name is Midge, by the way) so I had to take my bodice in. I just remove the brads in the side, moved it over about an inch and it fit like a charm. You can't even tell I had to reposition the brads.

Step 5: Belt Layout

At first I tried to draft the belt by using the dress form. This is completely possible and might even give you a better product, but laying it out on the floor is much less tedious. 

Simply lay out leather scraps, make sure that they overlap so you can connect them, until it is long enough to wrap around your waist. Its not really a science, if its short a couple inches you will be fine. If the ends overlap by a couple of inches, you will still be fine.

I did use some fur in my belt, which I also ordered off of Etsy. Yes, its real coyote fur scrap. Zoey refused to come into my room when I first got it. I felt like I was seriously messing with some bad juju by including it in my costume, but I had to do it in the name of costume design... or something... why didn't I just use fake fur?

Figure 7

Step 6: Glue down the Fur

If you use fur or even fabric scraps in your belt, you will want to secure it with some hot glue. Or some more brads, but I ran out of brads after I finished the bodice and I was left with the only option of using glue to secure it to the belt.

I found the best way to glue the piece down was to do this. Glue down the edge, press it down and let the glue cool. Lift up the rest of the scrap and glue down right next to where you previously glued. Press it back down and let it cool. Lift up the rest of the unglued scrap and glue right next to where you glued last time. Keep doing this, one line of glue at a time, until the scrap is completely glue down.

As you can see in Figure 8, you will use one line of glue at a time. This kept the glue from cooling while I hurriedly attempted to drizzle the hot glue every where. Cold, hot glue will not hold. Fresh, warm, hot glue will.

Figure 8

Step 7: Fasten the Leather Pieces down

When I went to Joann's to buy leather working supplies the thought never crossed my mind that they don't sell leather working supplies. I mean, why wouldn't they? They're a craft store... right?

Joann's does not sell leather working supplies. I knew this. I knew it. I should have ordered rivets or something on line, but instead I placed my bet on Joann's and I lost. Not only did they no have what I needed, but the supplies I bought to use in place where expensive. It was an expensive mistake.

So, if you want to go the cheap route just use the same brads that you used for the bodice and repeat the directions for attaching the leather together using brads. (This was my original intention but I ran out.) Instead, I used these funky snaps that Joann's sold. Each $8 box came with 6 snaps, and each snap came with four pieces. Out of the four pieces, I could only use one piece for the purpose of fastening my leather together. GREAT. 

I took some pictures of how I fastened these snaps just in case you go to Joann's and make the same mistake as me. The top piece of the snaps had little prongs to puncture the fabric. Unfortunately leather was far too thick for me to just shove the prongs through. This is where the exact-o knife comes in handy.

Place the snap, prongs side down where you want to secure your leather pieces together. Use a hammer to light pound the prongs into the leather. This won't puncture the leather, but it will leave tiny little marks where the prongs need to go.

Figure 9

Use your exact-o knife to make small holes where the prongs need to go. Repeat this process for both pieces of leather. It will look something like Figure 10 below.

Figure 10

Take your hammer and hammer down the prongs once they are through both pieces of leather to secure the snap in place.

Figure 11

Thankfully, this is enough to hold the leather in place. 

Continue doing this until your belt doesn't fall apart when you pick it up and try to put it on and all your leather pieces are secure. Remember, if you are using brads to keep the vertically oriented to resist the pull of the leather horizontally.

Step 8: Cut your Ties

So, I ran out of those stupid snap things before I could even use them to secure the leather to tie my belt around my waist. Whatever. Like I'll let that hold me back. I'm a physicist (sort of).

I cut 3 pieces of leather out of my scraps that were about 1/2 inch wide and 15-20 inches long. When i bought my leather off of Etsy, someone sent me some cool, antique metal rings as a thank you gift. I used that as a center piece to secure 2 pieces of leather to create one really long strap. Thankfully, I was able to use my sewing machine to secure them in place 

I then tied the one end of the strap to the end of my belt, as picture in Figure 12.

Figure 12

I took the last strap and tied it to the other end of my belt, not pictured. This allowed me to wrap the super long piece around my waist, secure the belt in place and tie it to the other end.

Figure 13

Here's the finished belt from the front. It looks better when its actually worn, its easier to get a more natural looking tie in the front.

Detail shot from the back.

Above is a picture of the back of the belt and the many snaps I had to add. My fingers were getting pretty raw having to deal with all those tiny, pointy pieces all afternoon so I was relieved to finish it.

Wow, I think that's all there is to it!

Its really not that difficult or expensive, especially if you're not going for 100% authenticity. I'm really happy with how the brads are holding up. Please don't bite my face off for not being authentic. :<