Male Nightingale Armor Skyrim - WIP

[PerniciousDuke]

Well, since you asked lol... I had to do another practice one to be sure it worked with my beveled edges anyway...

This is the only video I found: 

I changed it a little to make it even more hidden, but it also means less strength. The costume won't encounter as much wear as a pair of shoes, so I think it will be fine. Plus I added glue on the middle of the stich to give extra support.


My Hidden Stitch:

First I lined my pieces where I wanted. I moved the upper piece about 1/8" higher and scribed the line.
 

Using a 4-in-1 tool I made my holes along that line.
 

On the upper piece (where I want the stich hidden), I made a diagonal cut along the edge, very shallow and about 3/16" wide. You don't want to cut too deep into the rough side otherwise there will be very little holding the piece together.
 
You also don't want to cut too shallow or the threads will appear as humps under the smooth side. But, you do want to cut a good way into the leather from the edge towards the center of the piece. This will allow you to be able to peel back that top layer and work underneath.

Use an awl through your first punched hole and pierce the underside where your first hidden stich will be, about an 1/8" from the edge. You can use another piece of leather as a bracket for support and so you don't pierce yourself.
 


Insert the 4in1 in the incision you made. Making sure not to distort the peeled back smooth face, punch your holes like normal.
 

From here it's pretty straight forward. Do a traditional stitch, two needles on one thread passing through every hole. I back stick at the end by 1.5 holes.
   

Once you're done you can take access leather cut into a triangle and slowly apply leather glue to both sides of that incision. Be careful! Smooth leather does not like getting glue on it. Use as little as possible. Let it set 5-10 minutes then press pieces together. Viola! Hidden stich.
  

I then put some glue in between the two pieces for a little extra strength.
 


In 20 minutes, when I pull on those pieces of leather... the leather itself stretches before the stitch even moves a fraction. Success.

 

 

[Ragingstallion]

ive been waiting for someone to do some armor from skyrim, and it is looking awesome. can't wait to see the final piece

[PerniciousDuke]

Thanks man!

 

Update: (do you guys mind these thumbnail pictures? Do they enlarge when you click on them?)

 

Stitching leather is no joke. My hands feel like they're going to fall off and I've only connected 12 pieces. 
 
(Don't mind the rough edges. I will redye them, or paint them) 

I did manage to dye most of the pieces last night. 
 

Next challenge will be the chest. I think I'm happy with this set up:
  

I also took a couple passes with my router to make a jig for wet forming the chest strips:
  

[YinTx]

If you use a different photo hosting service, your images may be lost on this site in the future, which has happened to many older posts.  

Everything else is looking good, nice job on the hidden stitch!

YinTx

[Viking]

I’m really enjoying following this topic & learning from your whole process.  Keep the updates coming!!!

[PerniciousDuke]

Sorry for the long delay! I've been working at this suit a lot, but last weekend was most productive. Here's a super long post to make up for my absence.  

 

Update:

Feeling rather frustrated at the moment. The orbital sander snagged the bow and broke it in two. Sean Anwalt the extra hardener did help cure the lower layer. I put in about 3x the normal amount.

So instead of calling it quits I thought I would revamp myself by showing you guys more of what I've been up to.

Gloves:
I bought knuckleless gloves online. Cut 15mm squares of leather out. Butchered my belt. Installed the studs to leather and epoxies the leather over the rubber finger vents.
  


Chest:
I used Evakura's technique on 3d print finishing to clean up these accent pieces then painted with Black automotive Enamel. Epoxied them to leather that had snaps set in already.
  

The part that holds the Crest also holds the weight of the cape so I had to make sure it was strong. First I sewed the straps in. These middle four are functional, keeping the center held to the sides.

If I were to then sew the cover on in between these straps then you would see the exposed thread. Instead I had to punch holes and stitch through a spacer. (I'm sure there's a technical name for that.) It can be pretty hard to line up three sets of holes like that.
  
  
 
It's very strong now.

Arms:
This took a lot longer than expected.
The plan was to mummy wrap his arms from wrist to armpit. I bought Upholstery fabric because I liked the texture.

I knew if we just cut strips then there would be a high chance they'd fray and unravel. So I opted to make them twice as wide and fold the over. Essentially making a tube. Little did I know this is no easy task for a novice sew-er person. And we needed 50 feet!

First we cut at a diagonal. Apparently most cloth only has give in one direction like grain in wood. So cutting diagonally gives us the most versatility in our goal to wrap it around an arm and it will naturally want to curve up the arm.
 

Then we used a Serger because we had one. Basically it's a single use sew machine that puts thread everywhere! And cuts the fabric as you go!
 

The next part is a nightmare without this tool called a Fast Turner. To get the seam on the inside of the tube we have to turn the fabric. Using this metal tube and a wire with a hook on it the process takes about 20 seconds instead of 5 minutes doing it by hand.
  

Then I had to roll the seam in my finger as I ironed the tube flat before we could sew the tubes together.
 

We decided an angled seam between links would look better visually than a 90 degree one.
  

Now we're left with these humps of a seem. To get the flattest look possible we snipped the center of them so each side could be ironed a different direction.
  

Hand stitching using a curved needle we tacked the bands in a few places. We didnt want to fully sew in case the wrap was too tight or too loose for his arms.
 


Helm:
This is one of the only pieces I free handed the template and also contains a lot of detail so I thought I would show the process.

Using screenshots from game and math to scale up I came up with this template:
   

Sketched a design, transferred to leather, cut lines and hammered:
   

Let dry two days on a WW2 helmet insert for the proper shape.
 

I set snaps into folded canvas then hidden stitched that to three points on helm. Those keep the helm in place on the hood. But I still had the problem of the points getting bent out. So I took apart a bra to use the wire then epoxied it to the points. Now the wire fits through holes on the hood preventing the points from moving.
 



Mask:

I don't have many pictures here, but I'll tell you what I did. Similar template process to tooled as the helm.
 
But the shaping was a little trickier since the chin needed to be folded two ways. Long story short, I used the ball on the back of a dining chair that was the perfect curve and just kept pressing it along the chin line.

It worked, but the sides kept spreading out like wings so I cut a V shape on the underside of his chin. This worked and once dried I awled holes along the V and sewed it together.

I sent snaps in it and the ski mask and I put a grommet in so that he could hang the mask on his body when not being worn.


Cape:

There was no preparing me for how hard this was going to be. My mom and I worked together for 7 hours and made 3 1/2 capes.

We found a real wool poncho at goodwill for $4. I bought a table cloth as well for $2

First we cut the table cloth the same shape/size as the wool poncho so we know what we're working with. We brainstormed shapes and proportions for the hood and cape. I first decided to cut away the front of the cape. This way he didn't have to worry about the cape falling forward covering up the armor.
 

Then we tried to determine the shape of the hood which was really hard. We made Ken doll sized mocks ups to see what they looked like once sewn.
 

After many revisions we had something to work with.
 

The result of that weekend was worth it.
   

[Aven]

Wow!  That turned out awesome.  Nice job Duke.

[YinTx]

Seems nice, but sadly I can't see any photos because you are using a different image server, which seems to be down for the moment.  Usually best to just drop the photos on this site so this doesn't happen.  You will notice a lot of older posts are useless on this forum due to this fact.

YinTx

[PerniciousDuke]

1 hour ago, YinTx said:

Seems nice, but sadly I can't see any photos because you are using a different image server, which seems to be down for the moment.  Usually best to just drop the photos on this site so this doesn't happen.  You will notice a lot of older posts are useless on this forum due to this fact.

YinTx

YinTx - the other site is also a forum  (405th.com) and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. They are just updating the servers, they update once a month for a couple hours. 

 

I would host on this site if they had a bigger image capacity. I don't like the time it takes to resize them and the lower quality result.

 

Sorry for the delay, but if you check back tomorrow they will all be crystal clear. 

[spacedog]

Wow. Nice work PerniciousDuke. That turned out great.

[PerniciousDuke]

Thanks @aven and @space dog but it's not done yet!

 

1. I have to restring the arms tighter then install snaps for forearm and shoulder armor. 

2. Set snaps in cape so it stays in place. 

3. Make leather straps to synch top of boots. 

4. Sew knee armor in place. 

5. Line armor with suede 

6. Edge dye all leather 

7. Seal all leather

8. And finish the bow!

 

The bow is coming along though.  Got this far today:

Primered-

 

Painted base coat- Dark walnut

[PerniciousDuke]

The first test fit went great! There's a couple little things we'd like to fix, but overall I'm very happy with how it turned ouy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last edite

[Rockoboy]

Hmmmm ... when you make armour like that, you get girls like the 3rd last pic? I gotta find me some armour patterns!!

Edited March 19, 2019 by Rockoboy

[PerniciousDuke]

On 3/19/2019 at 3:53 AM, Rockoboy said:

Hmmmm ... when you make armour like that, you get girls like the 3rd last pic? I gotta find me some armour patterns!!

Hahaha! Totally. 

Meme credit: Huntress Creations 

[PerniciousDuke]

Check out this suit up video we made!  *turn the subtitles on for costume description*
 

 

[Aven]

Wow.  That is just amazing.  I'd say you hit that one out of the ball park.

[PedernalesFalls]

Hey man!  I'm working on a female version of this now,  just wondering how it turned out and if you've got any tips for me on my journey?