Leaderboard

I finished the leather vest today! The pattern was pretty simple - basically the same as the dress bodice, but with larger armholes and added length to the bottom with double-ended darts to make the vest form-fitting over my hips, belly, butt, and lower back, as shown in the comic. For the material, I used 2/3 oz veg tan leather in beige color (but it actually looks more like a tan color) from Tandy. The color is fairly close to the comic (which bugs me a little since I tend to obsess over matching colors exactly, but I'm not about to start messing with mixing leather dyes to get it closer). Plus it's pretty much an exact color match to the CRL. I used 3/4 in wide adhesive Velcro in a beige-ish color for the closure. Velcro makes the most sense to me since there are a couple panels in the comic (one example above) where the vest is open only in the middle section of the front opening (where Mara tucks in her blaster) and appears to stay closed at the top and the bottom. I also added a topstitch around the bottom edge and up the center front to match the topstitch or groove in the leather shown in the comic. Finally, the weathering. I was lucky that the leather I purchased had some scrapes and imperfections in it already (yay natural weathering!) I added some additional wear to the edges, side seams, and darts using a Scotch pad - a tip I picked up from one of Adam Savage's videos when I was looking into how to weather leather. Finished product: