Newto the community and building armor

[Shanko]

Greetings. I am brand new here and have built my own armor using EVA foam, but I have 3D printed since then. I can print full-size helmets, armor etc. no problem. The issue I am having is getting the undershirt, neck piece and pants. I have a sewing machine also, but short of sewing my own from scratch, can someone point me in the right direction for getting these undergarments or the accepted material to use? Thanks in advance

[BikerScout007]

4 minutes ago, Shanko said:

Greetings. I am brand new here and have built my own armor using EVA foam, but I have 3D printed since then. I can print full-size helmets, armor etc. no problem. The issue I am having is getting the undershirt, neck piece and pants. I have a sewing machine also, but short of sewing my own from scratch, can someone point me in the right direction for getting these undergarments or the accepted material to use? Thanks in advance

Hi there!  I believe @KOtrooper has some experience doing the garments from scratch!   

There are also some tutorials in the pinned posts here:

http://forum.501stpathfinders.com/forum/153-shoretrooper-soft-parts/

If like me, you want to purchase them from propmakers, we have a vendor list here:

 

 

Welcome to the Pathfinders forum!

[KOtrooper]

Hey Shanko! We have some pretty decent tutorials. The Breeches tutorial that was just completed by @Larcwide is amazing and very easy to follow.

I muddled through making my pants (my first ever sewing project). It seems overwhelming at first, but doable. 

For the undershirt, I basically used a sweatshirt pattern, figured out how it kinda went together, and sewed a lot of straight lines. A lot. The shirt is very forgiving as most is covered up.

For both, I wandered around a fabric store and got some that seemed right. The pants ended up being brown duck cloth. The shirt was a brown cotton jersey type fabric and I sewed headliner foam in the back to add the "puff" for the ribs. Super hot in the summer so proceed with caution.

Neck seal was some puffy black fabric I found. 

Sorry I'm not more specific. I'm not knowledgeable about different types of fabrics. Just used what looked right to me.

[Larcwide]

Welcome!

As KOtrooper mentioned I also did my own soft goods and have put the breeches pattern in the soft goods forum if you do want to go with making your own. For the undershirt I would go with the sweatshirt pattern, but stitching all of the ribs does take a lot of time. For gloves, I would say just buy them from Endor Finders.

For fabric types, KO has it right - duck cloth for the breeches and jersey (t-shirt) fabric for the undershirt. Unfortunately I’m UK based so can’t give you any leads on where to get it.

I actually ended up not being able to find brown duck cloth that I liked, so got some beige and dyed it with some Rit dye to get a colour I was happy with, so there are options if you can’t find exactly what you want.

For the ribs I put quilting/batting between two layers of the jersey fabric and used a twin needle to sew pin tucks. For the neck seal I used a faux leather backed with some more jersey fabric with a couple of layers of batting between, but used a length of 3mm tubing while stitching to add more depth to the ribs (I then pulled it out and let the batting keep the shape, but I think some people leave the tubing in).

However, as BikerScout007 said there are a few vendors you can buy the goods from as well, so either option is viable.

Any questions, just let us know and we’ll be glad to help!