Leather Tabbards

[Ani-Chay Pinn]

I tried out making leather tabbards (in ivory) and I wore them at CostumeCon over this past weekend and this is what I learned.

- I used 2-3 oz leather; it worked fine, but you do not want to go any heavier than that. It is the thickness of a leather jacket. 1-2 oz leather (like leather lining) would be lighter weight.

- I wore the tabbards with a heavy cotton tunic that I usually wear in cold weather and the leather tabbards worked very well with it.

- When I make tabbards I make long tubes sewn together on one side, turn them inside out and iron the seam on the inside of the tabbards. Because the leather was heavy weight I used linen on the underside of the tabbards. The linen side was a little shorter in width than the leather side, so the leather side folded over on the edges.

- Leather tabbards will slip off your shoulder. I tried heavy hooks and eyes, which worked OK, but they still came off sometimes. I don't know about trying huge snaps since I'd really like to conceal the fastener on the tunic, which is much easier to do with the 'eyes'.

I still need to get pictures, but the tabbards really did work out well.

[Ldi-Ovef Te_Azi]

I just used safety pins when i had issues with mah tabbards, worked well for me

[Granny-Wan]

I made tabards for a friend from distressed cowhide. It is soft, like upholstery leather, and can be sewn on a sewing machine. I glued on Velcro to hold it on the shoulders. They look fantastic!

Previously I'd made her a set out of 2-3 oz tooling leather, and they were too stiff.

The distressed look is awesome.

[Ldi-Ovef Te_Azi]

ooo, velcro is a really good idea, i will have to remember that.