Leather Armour Tutorial

I made some fake leather armour for my friend's wolf costume for Halloween. It's the first time I've made armour and it's not that fancy because I didn't have forever to work on it, but maybe that makes the tutorial easier to follow :3

What you'll need:

Vinyl fabric in black and brown
Taffeta fabric
Paper
Sewing stuff
Super chunky wool
Metal studs
Nuts and bolts (yup!)
Keyrings



Step 1
This is the spaulder.
Sketch a basic pattern on paper. Cut it out and pin it together. Try it on your guinea pig and trim or shape it where needed.
   

Step 2
Number each piece so you can keep track of what goes where.
Cut one of each piece out of black vinyl fabric, and one out of taffeta to use as lining.

Step 3
Do the same for the vambrace.
It should be tapered along the length, with a straight edge at the wrist, and a pointed end at the elbow
When cutting pieces for the second layer of the vambrace, leave a seam of about 3cm for the top layer to overlap

Step 4
Sew the taffeta to the wrong side of the leather

Step 5
Cut strips of brown vinyl fabric, about 2.5 cm wide. 
They should be cut on the bias (at a 45° angle to the selvedge) so they can stretch a bit around the curves when you sew them on

Step 6
Pin the brown strips to the curved edge of each piece of black vinyl, with the wrong sides facing together and sew.

Step 7
Fold the brown trim over and sew.

This brown vinyl was super sticky so I really had to wrestle it through my sewing machine so the stitching came out horribly messy. I tried putting a sheet of paper between the fabric and the machine but it didn't work and I was too lazy to Google other methods but I'm sure there are better ways of doing this :P

Step 8
Do the same for the straight edges, except make a small hem in the brown strip so it leaves a neat end.

Step 9
Pin everything together and try it on your guinea pig to figure out where the straps should go and how long they should be. It works out pretty adjustable in the end so you don't have to be very accurate to make it fit.
Cut straight strips for the straps. 
Using the same method, sew brown trim on these edges too.
To make the small loops, cut small straight strips and hem the edges

Step 10
Sew everything in place, except the last four flaps on the spaulder, because they need to be able to move with your arm.
Use nuts and bolts to attach those flaps. Poke holes through the fabric with a metal skewer in the place where you want the bolts to go. 
Push the bolt through from the wrong side so that when you screw the nut on it's visible from the right side.

Step 11
Now you can attach keyrings to the spaulder's straps and then decorate both pieces of armour with studs

Last step
Use super chunky yarn to tie your armour on, then go be awesome! ^_^

Thanks for visiting! See the finished costume here