HendoArt
Active Member
SOLDIER 76 BUILD
I haven't been active on here in a long time, but since I'm putting in a ton of effort into getting this build right, I'm going to log my Soldier 76 progress here!
For reference, I'm a 5'0" girl so my measurements aren't going to translate well for most of you normal-sized humans. I don't plan on changing any aspect of the design aside from wearing long white hair in a bun. So this isn't really a genderbend cosplay or anything, I'm aiming for it to be as close to a replica as I can afford!
THE JACKET
Once my pattern was finalized, I bought a fudge-ton of leather from the L.A. Fashion District. There's a place on Maple that has a bin of scraps that are $15-$30 per piece. I probably spent about $100 on the leather along, and painted 3 pieces to be white (x2) and yellow. The upside to using real leather instead of pleather or vinyl is that real leather is strong on its own (no interfacing required) and it's less stiff (important because of all the layers). Jacquard fabric paint is the best brand to use on leather; it's bright and doesn't peel or crack, but is like $7 a bottle.
I used normal polyester thread, but a leather sewing machine needle which helped a TON. I started with the 76 on top of yellow, then on black, then on white, then on red. Then I sewed that piece to the black. There is basically a full black jacket under it all to sew the various pieces to.
The front is layered white on top of red. I cut out the pocket shape and lined it with half of a zipper, then sewed it down to the front. I know it should be a functional zipper, but I didn't want to deal with that since I didn't want to have functional pockets anyway. I'd rather it lay flat on my stomach; Soldier has hella pockets everywhere anyway. Next I sewed the blue trim down the front. I also sewed the sleeves in layers, and tested them for length before sewing them to the jacket. There are like 7 layers at the sleeve seam, so i had to sew VERY slowly and my machine wasn't happy, but it did it just fine!
I also sewed down the belt part at the bottom of the jacket, and gave it loops to feed through. The type of zipper you need is called an "Open End Separating Zipper" and has the thing you hook on at the bottom so the jacket can open. After the zipper was on, I sewed blue leather to the inside of the jacket so it looks finished on the inside when it's open at the top.
And this is pretty much done! I still have to do the flaps at the end of the sleeves and make the harness, but I think the jacket is the hardest part of this build so I'm glad it's done. This took like 4 days and was pretty expensive, so I'd def say that the prices I've seen for the manufactured jackets online is totally worth the price!
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