Thor cosplay: Leathercrafting

All Thor posts can be found here.

     When I started working at my current job, the entire department was a mess. Things were tucked into random hiding places, nobody knew exactly what we had for office supplies, and there was tons of stuff laying around unused. Being the minimalist organizer that I am, I set about inventorying and cleaning up, and discovered a huge (3' tall, 7" in diameter) roll of thick brown paper that no one knew the purpose of. I didn't want to get rid of it, in case it turned out to be useful later, but I did cut off about 50' and take it home for crafting purposes, and it has been absolutely indispensable.

     One of the occasions for its use was the belt for Thor. The character has a wide belt that is clearly shaped to fit closely at the top and the bottom; a belt made from a straight piece of leather will not do that on a curved body. Since my hips are 14" larger than my waist, I've generally just not worn belts in the past, but this outfit required it, so... break out the brown paper! I tried several curves and front shapes until I found one that looked and fit well, and then had to decide what to make the belt out of.

     Many of the cosplays I've seen have made the belt out of pleather or stiffened fabric, and to my eye, it detracts from the overall look. I have never worked with leather before, but, I figured, how hard can it be? Don't get me wrong, the super fancy, fitted, articulated, tooled stuff must take a heck of a lot of time, but one belt? Can't be too bad. And for once, I was right.

Thor cosplay: Fabric parts

All Thor posts can be found here.

     I started the idea of the Thor cosplay back in 2017, while I was still working on my Master's degree. The first piece (bracer) took about 4 months, and the hammer wasn't finished until the end of 2018, mostly due to time and prioritizing other hobbies. While several of the pieces overlapped at the end of 2018, it wasn't until early 2019 when I realized I wanted to actually get serious and finish the cosplay in time for this year's Baltimore ComicCon.

     Most of the things I've made start out with a base pattern and get modded along the way. I'd done a sketch of the Thor skirt and... tabard? Skirt tabard? Frontispiece? Whatever it was called, I wanted it to be on the same waistband as the skirt, because I hate layering things. I started with Simplicty pattern 8719, made a mock-up for the draping back, cut it down, made another for the front drape, cut THAT down, and then laid all three of the pieces out to make the final.

Thor cosplay: Breastplate (part 2)

The link to part 1 is here, and ended with the second version of the breastplate formed and ready to be decorated:

     Since I'm not very good at freehand painting designs, particularly on a curved, irregular surface, I decided the best way to add a design to the bottom edge would be to cut it out of something and stick it on so it wouldn't move around. Initially I thought craft foam would be best, but I tried a section and it was weird having squishy designs on a "metal" breastplate, so I ended up using a single sheet of Worbla. That actually turned out to be easier, as I could just lay the pieces in place and heat them up to get sticky, rather than faffing about with adhesives.

     As per usual, however, while I was prepping to do that, the gorget (neck armor) started bothering me. In the comics, the gorget is two pieces, and I'd thought I would just add a line in the middle of it to resemble two pieces, but the more I looked at it, the less I liked having a huge, fixed gorget. I set aside the designs for a moment and went back to making paper drafts of an articulated gorget and broaches to cover the ends. Eventually ended up with a decent pattern, and was ready to move on: