Occasionally people ask what’s involved in making things so I thought I’d quickly run through the process of stuff as it landed on the workbench and time allowed.
First up is the fur mantle, it was originally designed when I read the brief for Wintermark at Empire but it fits well with quite a few briefs.
Picture 1, The Fur
All the fur I use is synthetic. The quality of this has come on leaps and bounds since the early days when we ran around in fun fur. Best places to look for it are remnant stores such as Abakhan or E-bay. I’d recommend seeing it in person if you can as the quality isn’t always obvious in the pictures. It’s also called faux fur.
Picture 2, The pattern.
I actually use the pattern from our hood mantle as it sits in exactly the same place. It’s roughly a ¾ circle pattern so not too tricky to make your own pattern. Start by cutting a rough circle out of newspaper, then cut the ¼ and the neck hole. Try it on and go from there. You’re looking for the newspaper to mostly sit flat all the way round your shoulders. It’s easy to cut more out or tape bits back on and it doesn’t matter if you cock it up completely, it’s only newspaper.
I’m going to cut it from the back using a scalpel(craft knife will do). From the back because it’s really tricky to mark the fur side, and using a scalpel as you don’t want to cut the hair, just the base layer it’s woven into.
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Picture 3, Fur cut out.
I’ve cut bigger than the pattern because I want the mantle bigger than my hood one but also I’m putting some variation in the edge profile so they don’t look too regular.
Picture 4, Edge binding.
While the fur won’t unravel because of the weave it still a good idea to give it a hand in the areas of most wear. I use a leather binding strip which is just a 40mm wide piece of upholstery leather. I use 40mm as it give a 20mm edge which looks about right to me. Bias binding would work just as well to keep everything neat and could be sewn on a domestic machine.
Picture 5, Sewing the first seam
Start from the back with the binding. You can put witness marks on the back so your binding is even all the way round. It’s really tricky to get this right if you start from the front. If you want to use leather but the machine isn’t up to it you might be able to punch the sewing holes by running the strip through your sewing machine on the longest stitch length but without any thread in it. This gives you a much easier time with the needle. Don’t forget to do both sides of the strip though.
Picture 6 Sew the second seam.
From the front this time roll the binding over and sew it down. It’s not always easy at this point to tell where the edge of the fur is but if you use the stitch line of the first seam and take it slowly you won’t be too far out. With hand sewing it just takes times but you should be a lot more accurate.
Picture 7, All the way round.
Repeat part 6 and 7 with the rest for the inner edges. I do the two front edges first, then the neckline and I complete both front and back of each piece before moving onto the next one. Doing the two straight ones first allows you to get your eye in if you haven’t made one for a while.
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Picture 8, reinforcing tabs.
It’s only fabric when all said and done so if you’re going to put some sort of fastening on the mantle you need to reinforce the mounting area. I’m using a toggle for this one so I’m using offcuts from the binding strip to put to 40×40 patches on the inside, where the cord for the toggle is going to go. It just spreads the load. Same applies if you’re riveting anything on. A rivet will work it’s way through the fabric in less than one event but a leather patch will hold it for years. Don’t make the mistake of just riveting through leather without stitching it on though. It won’t give as much reinforcement.
Picture 9, Eyelet the holes.
I eyelet the holes as well, again to spread the load, make it more durable.
Picture 10, Tie the toggle on.
Simple horn toggle, wood would work as well. I prefer 2 hole toggles as I think they line up better than single hole but both work. I use a microfibre (synthetic) suede cord as it’s tough at the thickness and come on 100m rolls but you can use thin strips of that upholstery you cut the binding from. Getting the cord the right length is a pain. I usually tie the toggle so it’s on the centreline of the split, turn it inside out and then tie the loop one tight on the toggle.
And that’s it. If you’ve got any questions just put them in the comments and I’ll get back to you. I’d also appreciate any feedback about this whole concept.
Most of our pouch designs are based on a box. It’s an easy shape to make and it give good volumetric capacity for the amount of leather used. As my training was in engineering rivets were the fastening of choice, sewing is fine but I like hitting things with hammers.
All you need to do to make the pattern is lay the box out flat. The picture shows one of our patterns with the original constructions lines on it. The first thing to do is work out how wide and tall you want the box to be. Draw that on the card and you have the back of your box. Next add a rectangle that shows the depth of the box onto the bottom of back. That’s the back and the base of your box done so now add another rectangle the same size as the back to be the front of the box. The sides on this design meet in the middle so you you add half the depth to either side of the front and back. This will be the rivet line that the rivets go down so you have to add some extra material for the rivets to grip. I normally add 6mm per side.
To make sure theres no gap at the bottom I add a tab to the base which can fold in upwards to meet the folded sides. Rivet holes are marked on the rivet line on both sides with the one on the tab being on the centreline of the base.
This pouch has a separate flap which I prefer as it allows the flap to be made wider than the box is. This helps stop things falling out of the pouch when it’s squashed flat as it’s always in danger of being in Larp.
Brick Pouch Pattern
The Finished Pouch
As promised, below you can see a picture of the finished pouch. I’ve closed it using a strap and buckle set but other options are loop and toggle, a tongue and loop or there are any number of latches. I’ve gone for a chunky strap width as this pouch is made from 3.5mm thick leather so is quite solid and I think the fastening has to reflect that.
It’s mounted onto the belt via the two loops on the back. This setup holds the pouch close to the body which is great if you do a lot of running around as it doesn’t move but can get in the way a little when you sit down. The answer to that problem is to ususpend the pouch from straps but that just means it flaps about when your run. Best way of mounting the pouch does somewhat depend on what sort of character you’re playing, strolling and sitting, hanging straps, runnig around and going upside down then back loops.
You can also see from the back picture(which is actually a different pouch) that the fold at the side shows the exposed side so that looking from the front it’s nice and smooth. It’s only a small detail but makes a huge difference to the appearance.
The Brick Pouch
Making a New Pouch Design
one of my irregular leather suppliers turned up with some heavy upholstery leather(1.2mm) in a golden yellow. It reminded me of a picture I’d seen of a medieval pouch so I set out to make my own version. This was primarily intended for Empire where a medieval pouch of that design would fit with a number of national briefs.
It’s based on our existing bollock pouch design where the belt loops are formed by folding part of the pouch over rather than having separate straps.
For this version I decided to have the pouch body in the golden yellow upholstery while the flap and belt loops would be in a medium weight leather(2mm). First up was the pouch body, picture 1 shows the half pattern for the body. I start with a half pattern when I’ve drawn free hand as it means things will be symmetrical when it’s flipped. Picture 2 is the two pouch body sections before sewing. Picture 3 is the pouch body finished, note that the top edge has been rolled and stitched. This is to reinforce the opening and give it some stiffness.
The pattern for the flap and belt loops is in picture 4. In this case I was designing to go over a 2” wide belt, you can see how it folds in later pictures. The flap part is just slightly wider than the belt loop section to make sure it covers the pouch body fully as the pouch body will be stitched to the bottom of the belt loops as seen in picture 5. Picture 6 shows the flap folded over to create the belt loops. If you unpicked and unfolded that and looked at the two lines of stitch holes, that’s the distance you would adjust to alter the belt width the loops are designed to fit over.
Picture 7 is the first version finished with strap and buckle and decorative metalwork. If you look you can see it’s off centre. This was caused as I didn’t leave enough space between the bottom of the belt loop section and the fold stitching so the foot of the sewing machine was nudged by the pouch body which was of course sewn to the bottom of the belt loop section. This was sorted with some minor tinkering with the pattern and the creation of versions 2 and 3 before the finished pattern was arrived at with version 4 which is in picture 8
