Introduction: Minbari Warrior Shoulder Badges and Breastplate
Checkout vicious Jha'dur and cutie Neroon in gorgeous Minbari Uniform Frills. Let's build the stuff.
Measurements.
Shoulders - measured from shoulder edge to shoulder edge along the back
Waist - wrap the tape measure around your waist so that it is slightly loose, but doesn't fall to the hips
Shoulder-to-waist - tie a string around your waist and measure from the shoulder along the back to the string
Supplies
- Metal pyramid studs 25 mm. Like these ones.
- Black board made of smth foamy 3mm thick. I think they are used as baseboards for presenting art, so your local art supply shop should stock them. Something like this.
- Green cotton fabric for trim - under 1m.
- Black thick fabric for the back surface - under 1m. Any upholstery fabric should do.
- Black hooks & loops stripes for mounting shoulder badges - Shoulders cm plus about 20 cm for the breastplate fasteners.
- Heavy-duty nylon trim 30mm wide for the belt - 2 x Waist cm.
- Heavy-duty nylon trim 25mm wide for the breastplate straps - 5 x Shoulder-to-waist cm
- Black Plastic buckle 38mm wide. Like this one.
- Double-sided glue tape 5mm wide.
- Sewing machine and sewing essentials.
- 3D printed belt buckle from here.
- Silver and gold acrylic paint for the buckle.
- Black braided cord trim - 2m. Like this one.
Step 1: Base
- Get your black board and cut out the rectangular bases from it.
- 2 shoulder badges 17x25 cm.
- 1 breastplate 18x30 cm.
- Mount the pyramid studs. Thrust them all at once first, then turn the board around and bend the tails with something firm, like a plastic ruler.
- Bend the shoulder badges slightly along the long axis.
Step 2: Green Trim and Mounting Stripe
- Get your green cotton fabric and draw the rectangle size of the base on it. Assuming that the trim will be 2 cm wide, make the inner indention 4 cm wide and the outer 8 cm wide.
- Cut it out along the outer and inner borders and make 2 cm diagonal cuts from the inner border to the corners.
- Fold the inner edge wrong side to wrong side, iron it, pin it and sew it on.
- Put the green piece on the base, align the inner cut-out with the pyramid studs and fix it with double-sided glue tape along the edges, right on the front face of the base. Sew it on. Be careful not to run your needle into a metal stud, it will break. Also use the reinforced jeans needles for the sewing machine, not the standard ones. Like these.
- Wrap the outer edges of the fabric around the base and sew them on from the other side.
- Cut out the rectangle size of the base plus wrap-finish edges width from the black fabric. Iron the wrap-finish edges, pin them, and sew them together wrong side to wrong side.
- For badges only. Cut the hooks stripe the same length as the loop stripe on the shoulder of the tabard. Sew it on the right side of the black piece.
- Sew the black piece to the back side of the base along the edges.
Step 3: Shoulder Badges Braided Cord Trim
Hand-sew the black braided cord trim to the edge of the green trim on both shoulder badges.
Step 4: Belt Buckle
Print the buckle from here and paint it.
Step 5: Breastplate Harness
- Make a belt from the 30mm nylon trim and the plastic black buckle. The plastic black buckle is fastened on the back as we gonna have the proper buckle at the front. Pin the upper edge of the belt to the bottom of the breastplate.
- Make 2 loops from the 25mm nylon trim so that they can slide freely along the belt. Sew short hooks stripes on the outer surface of the loops.
- Make 2 shoulder straps from the 25mm nylon trim and sew them on the inner side of the upper corners of the breastplate.
- Fitting time. Pin short loops stripe on the inner sides of the shoulder straps and align their position so it fits your body size.
- Hand-sew the painted buckle to the belt as you would sew a normal through-the-hole-mounted button. The buckle has button holes. That's what they are for.
- Hand-sew the top of the belt to the bottom of the breastplate.
Step 6: Done
And that's done. All ready to go.