With the gauntlets made, the remainder of the costume was next. My original plan was to do a full-body costume, with trousers and boot-covers. However with looming time constraints I had to prioritise, which meant focusing on the upper body first. The upper body would be broken down into three main pieces: The sleeves, to be attached to a plain black sweater; the vest to be worn over the sleeves (and attached if time allowed) and the collar to be worn over the vest.
The Sleeves
Measuring the black sweater as a template, I marked the rough location of my elbows while wearing the sweatshirt in order to estimate where on the pattern to place the elbow pad, and to work the design out around there. The design would involve sections of metallic red spandex as “plates” of armour separated by strips of gold spandex sewn underneath.
The Vest
With limited knowledge of sewing patterns, I used the sweater again as a guide, combined with rough measurements of myself to get the sizing right. Knowing the limitations of my experience, I added some margin to these measurements, but in the end the vest still ended up very tight to wear. It involved two pieces, a front and back, with the red spandex as an underlayer and strips of gold spandex for a bottom border and vertical “seams” across the front.
Even with the walking foot sewing machine head (which was such a worthwhile purchase when dealing with the spandex) over longer seams and a greater number of thread breaks the alignment between the two base layers drifted noticeably, but not beyond the excess material I had left around the template. The rear section was similar to the first, lacking the V-shaped extension at the bottom and only featuring the lower horizontal border of gold.
The Collar
I created the collar using a darker metallic red fabric I had managed to find online. To create the gold “pips” I cut pieces of 3mm foam into circles and sewed a layer of gold spandex around them.
The collar was made from two pieces, with an outer border of gold spandex and eight coins/pips sewed on.
The Necklace
An additional component was the Dungeon Master’s pendant or necklace. Lacking the time to design/print a more 3D version, I resorted to trusty old 3mm foam and hot glue to create a makeshift version.
