Zam Wesell Build

[Jaedena]

Hello,

I've been a huge fan of Star Wars since I was a kid - and honestly, I blame George for me not liking Disney; the Han/Leia love story was so much more believable than any fairy tale coming out of the Disney studios but I digress. I wasn't as enamoured with the prequels, but one character's costume struck me and I loved it. Queue the year project.

It started five years ago when I bought a set of JDFett's greeblies over at TDH. I worked on those greeblies for a bit, cleaning them up, filing sanding and getting them ready for paint... then real life set in and the momentum ground to a halt.

Fast forward to April 2012 and a mysterious box shows up at my door out of the blue. I open it up to discover all this wonderful stuff:



Apparently a friend of mine who'd also wanted to do the costume had decided she no longer had the time to complete it and had remembered that I had said it was something I'd eventually like to do. I am truly blessed by my friends!

So this renewed a project that honestly seemed out of my reach for so long.

More updates to come.

 

[Panaflex]

Cool! My wife made one of these and I remember dying a lot of little leather squares purple for what seemed like weeks. Great costume. Can't wait to see your progress.

 

[red4]

Are you going to learn how to change your face too?

 

[Jaedena]

Re: Zam Wesell Build - Skirt Update - Pic Heavy

Someone has suggested a sculpt, but I don't think that's in the cards for me.

I started off with the skirt build, because honestly that was the part that scared me the most. I bought 6/7oz double shoulder tooling hide - approximately 8.5 sq ft, 50 3/16th antique brass eyelets (for the vest), 50ft brown leather lace, 23 sq ft natural tooling & lining pig skin (to make the lacing that will hold the skirt together), one table top lace cutter, blue, brown, black and red water stain dyes and matte finish clear coat for the project.

Part of the documentation that I had received included a rough estimated pattern for the skirt. We took this, factored in my own height and counted the columns and rows in the reference pictures and calculated the height and width of each row. For the record, my skirt is 12 columns and 12 rows, so 144 squares of leather had to be cut. Starting with a straight edge, we used the pull tool to cut long strips of leather in the required width. Each row had the same width.



The bottom edge of each square is slightly longer than the top edge and we wanted the squares to be uniform in shape, so we created templates for each row's square, and flopped the template to minimize waste leather.



After a while you end up with this:



Then the fun part begins. From here, each square needs four oblong holes punched in them for a grand total of 576 holes. I started off working with an all metal 1/4" oblong hand tool but it didn't last through three pieces of leather before it broke. A quick look on eBay (Tandy didn't carry what I needed) and I was able to find a 1/4" bag punch which did the trick nicely. I quickly discovered that a firm base (my front porch) made for a much better surface to work on rather than a block of wood or a table.



From there, I went all mad scientist with my dyes and using some of the remnants of the leather, I did some experimentation, trying to get the best colour. The stupid thing is, whenever I would dismiss a certain mixture, I tossed it in a clear glass bowl. At the end of the day, just on a lark, I tossed a piece of leather in the waste water. Next day, that was the best matching colour. Go figure.



We also used the pull tool on the pig hide and created leather lacing - a lot of it - very quickly. I sewed the ends together using my trusty sewing machine with the zig zag setting and dyed that too. Studying the pictures and a bit of experimentation, I figured out how to 'stitch' the columns of the skirt together. One row alone took one hour to assemble. Twelve rows was a total of twelve hours of work. I tied off the ends of the columns to an 80's grommet belt I picked up at a thrift store. The last picture is very red; something that would become an issue later down the road.



One thing I wish I did with this was to soften up the leather before I assembled all the parts. As it stands now, the skirt is very stiff and doesn't flow well, but on the other hand, it doesn't sag under it's own weight. Not sure how to fix that other than just wearing the costume.

More to follow, thanks for reading!

 

[bobafett669]

Any progress? Would love to see more of this build