One hour no-sew Han Solo swashbuckler shirt (ESB)

[RowBoatCop]

After some time trying to figure out a cost/time effective way to recreate the swashbuckler shirt from esb, I came up with this.

Supplies were an old white dress shirt, two white pillowcases & my hot glue gun, so aside from €2.50 for the pillow cases this was a zero cost build.

First I stripped the buttons off, then cut away one of the layers where the top button goes in order to fold it back between the collar without too much bulk

I cut an angle into the buttoning part (I have no idea what the terms for shirt construction are!) so that there wouldn't be any stray threads ruining the finish. I ironed the collar so that it lined up nicely with the "bottom" of the collar, then hot glued this in place to form the desired look.

Next I simply folded the pillowcases in half & ironed the crease, I found that half the width of (what I assume are standard size) pillowcases worked for the width of the front portion, from checking reference photos.



There's not much to it really, just hot glue one half inside & outside the shirt opening, being sure to line up the front portion where it meets the collar, & keeping it straight, I didn't do any major measurements, or anything aside from using a steel ruler to line things up.



To finish I worked out how the folds should sit & hot glued the crap out of everything, not much finesse involved but none of it will be seen.

Finished product:




I'm pretty happy with it overall, for a one hour build to get something that looks relatively accurate for next to nothing was pretty cool. It moves well & will look great once I get my solo jacket to go with it. I'd recommend this method for someone who wants a step above using a normal shirt without becoming a seamstress or paying a premium for some of the great screen accurate shirts available.



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[Egon]

Looks great! really impressed with the no sew!

 

[RowBoatCop]

Looks great! really impressed with the no sew!

Thanks! I didn't really have the option so I'm happy with how it turned out. Obviously using hot glue there are limitations there, I'm not sure how I'd manage washing the thing for example, but for a quick costume build for a con/halloween this would be fine. Also it'd be simple for someone to use the same method with a sewing machine, using the pillow cases simply means there wouldn't be any need to hem anything, so it'd still be a very easy & fast build

 

[RowBoatCop]

Update: just received the jacket I'm going to modify for my ESB costume so I decided to do a quick test fit to see what the shirt/jacket will look like together. I think it's starting to come together, I still need to sort the pants out & re-do the leather parts of my holster (scratch built years ago, looking a bit tattered now)



Can anyone tell me if the jacket looks the right length? From the reference photos I've looked at it seems to be about right but I'd appreciate some input, cheers.


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[kathgruben]

What a great idea for a quick halloween or con costume.

 

[RowBoatCop]

What a great idea for a quick halloween or con costume.

I agree, I've seen a lot of solo costumes online (as in, not on the RPF) that are very much "you get the general idea" jobs, when with just a little ingenuity you can get something far above that level. With a Han Solo costume where it's essentially a shirt, jacket & pants the details mean everything as far as being recognisable goes, so it's worth it (and easily achievable) even on a tight budget/timescale


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[ItalianNinja86]

Jacket looks just a bit long if my shoddy memory is right the Jacket ends right at the bottom edge of the pants belt.

Also for not sewing and for spending just 2.50 thats an impressive looking ESB shirt.

 

[RowBoatCop]

Jacket looks just a bit long if my shoddy memory is right the Jacket ends right at the bottom edge of the pants belt.

Also for not sewing and for spending just 2.50 thats an impressive looking ESB shirt.

Thanks for the input, I think you're correct on the jacket too, from looking at more screen caps today it seems like it comes about as far as the top of the gun belt, which is a plus really as I wouldn't want that covered up in any case. The Anovos ESB costume mannequin photos appear to show it as long as the bottom of the gun belt, I'd assumed these were screen accurate too but I guess it's up to interpretation

 

[Solos blaster]

Following this thread from monsterpartyhat 's ESB jacket thread. Just wanted to mention that the shirt looks awesome and I may be giving this a try myself.
RowBoatCop, how sheer or solid is the base shirt and did you have to look at different "white" pillowcases before purchasing them, or did you just go grab the first white ones you found? lol

 

[RowBoatCop]

Following this thread from @monsterpartyhat 's ESB jacket thread. Just wanted to mention that the shirt looks awesome and I may be giving this a try myself.
@RowBoatCop, how sheer or solid is the base shirt and did you have to look at different "white" pillowcases before purchasing them, or did you just go grab the first white ones you found? lol

To be honest I just bought the first ones that looked like they'd do the job, after a certain point white is white, standard cotton pillowcases and a basic white dress shirt are pretty much the same thing.

I wasn't too worried about matching the shade/fabric because almost none of the shirt is visible under the jacket (though they are very similar). a couple of parties I was at got pretty warm but wearing just the shirt I found that outside of full daylight you couldn't tell they were two different fabrics. the shirt itself is pretty light but it's a solid white.

I'd definitely recommend doing it, even for people who aren't fans it's the small details that really say "that's Han Solo". I got more compliments from people on the shirt than the gun belt!

Edit: if I was to revisit it I would take monsterpartyhat's lead & remove some of the unseen fabric from the pillowcases after it was finished, this wasn't a problem for me but there's no reason to leave it there really

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[TinyTim]

I'm setting up a version of this sans jacket for the release of RO. Thanks for making this so straightforward!

 

[Frogfreak]

I'm confused. How do you fasten the two ends together?

 

[vader45]

I'm confused. How do you fasten the two ends together?

Snaps or velcroe.

 

[Frogfreak]

Makes sense!