Both of these are good thoughts. The idea of leather rather than fabric
struck me after I wrote my note, but I'm not in contact with local
re-enactors and I don't do much leatherwork, though I might be able to sew
some heavy pieces together. Maybe a combination, with leather on the
outside, PVC for stiffness, and I could get away without hardening it that
way. Bonus: My son could help with putting the leather together.
--Robin
My hint for working with the leather if you plan on sewing by hand is to run
it through the sewing machine first without thread and using the heavy duty
needle, ideally a leather needle. It is a lot less demanding on your hands
to be able to stitch through leather that is already pre-punched, and the
holes will be perfectly even so your stitching will look even better. That
and use the smallest needle you can deal with and have a small pair of
needlenose pliers on hand. Sometimes pulling the needle through the leather
is contingent on being about to grasp the needle and the pliers help a lot.
It's either that or use a bit of spray adhesive on the pvc and just wrap the
leather around, holes drilled through the top to allow the lacing through,
could go really quick. The bottom could be capped with a circle that is
"gathered" up over the end, the inside glued and the outside wrapped with a
leather strip.
depends on the look that you're going for.
alex
_______________________________________________
h-costume mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
