TFA Leia vest

I didn't have time to post this before Comic Con, but here is how I made the vest.

From the reference picture my take on it was that I couldn't see a shoulder seam, no collar, no fastenings and that strange double layer at the shoulder. I actually threw out the question on Facebook on the issue with the layers of fabric could be, and I got an answer from Kathy that it looked like the kind of shoulder tuck that you also find on jedi tunics and X-wing pilot jumpsuits. So went to the Rebel Legion forums and read up on a couple of jedi tutorials to figure out what the tuck was, and then I started on the vest.

I had ordered 1 m of black, heavy twill. The fabric was a pretty good match I think, but I should have ordered more so I could have self lined it, still this is just an experiment and I'm counting on having to redo quite a lot when we get proper reference pictures.

 I started out with a basic t-tunic shape. The kind where you simply fold the fabric in half and cut a hole for the head. I also cut up the front, and back so that I ended up with two pattern pieces. I wanted the vest to be a bit figure hugging, and for that I wanted a shaped back seam. I left some excess fabric over the arm holes and folded the excess fabric in until I felt that it looked good.

This is what the pattern piece looked like in the end. The back is down, so you can see that the back seam has quite a big curve, I really hope that the original has a back seam or else it will be hard to get the vest to fit snuggly.

Here you can see that there was quite a lot of extra fabric to fold in order to create the shoulder tuck.

I folded the fabric under, and handsewed the tuck on the inside, so that there are no visible seams. If I had lined the vest I would have attached the tuck to the lining. Then I just hemmed the armholes the front and the bottom of the vest, I didn't even have enough fabric left to do narrow facings. For the neck opening I sewed it to a piece of cotton tape and folded it down.

This is probably the best picture of the vest, when me and Björn tried to recreate the trailer shot.

I will try to show how I made the hairstyle as well later on.