Outer Vest
Now to the iconic green leather vest that the Green Arrow wears. I did hit a time crunch and I didn't take many pictures of the sewing process, but I will talk about what I did but it is VERY similar to what I did with the pants.
I have seen a cosplayer that I follow use the following technique to making a pattern so I wanted to try it out. I knew that this vest will be heavy and bulky but still needed to be worn over the other vest so I made sure to make the pattern with the other vest still on the dress form.
I started by covering the whole dress from and vest with plastic wrap. I then covered one half (front and back side) of the dress form with duct tape. This actually uses a bit more Duct tape that I thought and I ended up running out of what we had at home and had to run to Walmart for more.
Once you have the duct tape on, start drafting your pattern pieces right onto the tape with a sharpie. Now, this is not a very error-friendly way of pattern making but you can easily cut/tear small pieces of tape and cover up the lines that you don't need or mis-drew. Make sure to label all your pieces too. There are going to be a lot.
Now CAREFULLY cut the plastic wrap off the dress form and cut away from the duct tape. I put the pattern back on the dress form just for this picture and to make sure it looked good before committing to cutting out the pieces. Make sure to add seam allowances (about 5/8" to pieces that are not leather). You need to have that lip there to give the leather a place to sew together. I highly recommend taking the time to find a way to make the mesh pieces larger. I make the top part of the vest a large mesh piece and sewed the leather right over it and it make life so much more simpler!
Here is when I stopped taking so many pictures. Like with the pants, I started with the front of the vest and started to piece together the pecs and ab pieces.
Hindsight, I wish I had just make a large piece of mesh and neoprene and sewn the smaller pieces to it but it still all worked on in the end. This process is going to be very long, especially when you add in the painting and drying of the faux leather. I believe it took me about 2 days to sew this all up, and I pulled all nighters both nights too. Once both sides were mostly done, I added the rivets and hung it on the dress form to check the work and size. Now, most of the leather will all be sewn down at all edges, but there is a piece that is apart of the top ab piece that extends to the armpit. This piece is not sewn down because it is a quiver strap holder. It looks like there is a snap that holds the piece in place but I didn't have time to hunt down a snap (they didn't have any at Walmart and Joann's is on the other side of town) so I just used a rivet instead. I would highly recommend lining this leather piece with some neoprene to give it some extra volume and strength. You can see this piece holding the strap in place in the reference photo below.
Once the front pieces were done, I started with the chevron pieces in the back and attached the back to the front with the side panels. As I was sewing, I was sewing the leather pieces directly onto a piece of neoprene to give the vest more structure as well as the peek a boo black between the leather panels.
For the decorative piece at the bottom of the back of the jacket, I took the painted piece of leather, and used the farbri-tac glue and glued some strips up mesh to the leather and then glued a neoprene backing to it. Make sure you add a touch of glue to the sides for the mesh to allow the leather to attach to them to create the ribbed look.
The Hood
This part was tricky. I started with the center panel that runs down the center of the hood. I ended up cutting out a piece that was about 23 inches long and maybe 5 inches wide. From there, I found the corner of my muslin and made a 1/4 circle to create the starting of the hood sides. I continued to fine tune the hood (I noticed that the center piece tappers in a bit towards the front) and I wanted to make the the bottom edge of the hood would still fit onto the vest.
Before sewing the hood pieces together, I am going to share with you a way I WISH I had done it. It wasn't until afterwards I realized it would have looked nicer this way. ALSO, make sure your hood pieces are COMPLETELY dry! I rushed into this step and when I was done sewing the seams and went to turn the piece right side out, the paint had started to stick to each other and peeled a little bit. I had to go back and do some touch up paint a long the seams.
I decided to line the hood with the black neoprene to help give the hood more structure and weight. I highly recommend sewing just the leather pieces together and then sew just the neoprene hood pieces together. Stop at this step because now you need to add the decorative arrow design to the leather. I went back and sewn an additional stitching down the seam allowance to allow for the hood to lay flat instead of bunching at the seam.
For the decorative arrow design, I drew out a template on neoprene and then traced it onto just the leather part of the complete hood. I did two different techniques for this step and I will share with you the one that was easiest and yielded a better result. Cut out a large piece of mesh (that will easily clear the stitching needed around the design and paint and dry the mesh green. Then, very carefully, stitch along the drawn line on your leather hood onto the mesh below. Once the mesh is secured to your hood, you can trim away the excess mesh and then carefully cut around the stitching on the leather to expose the mesh detail below.
The first detail I did, I had cut the leather first and then added the mesh and it was a nightmare to sew up. I don't recommend cutting the leather first. You can see how it was difficult to sew the leather down to the mesh and it created a slightly ugly edge.
Now that the leather has the attached mesh design sewn on, you can now attach the two hood pieces together. With right sides together, sew the hood pieces together around the top part (the part of the hood that goes around the face of the wearer). I did not do this on my costume and it ended up with you being able to see the seams and extra seam allowances along the inside of the hood.
I would also recommend sewing along the edge of the front of the hood to keep the seam flat and give the front edge of the hood a clean and sharp look.
I took constant measurements along the way to make sure the hood stayed at the same length needed to fit to the vest. This is important because you don't want the hood to be too long or too short once attached.
The real costume also has a collar on the inside of the hood so when the hood is down, you can see the collar of the outer vest. To achieve this look, I pretty much designed the vest to be like the other inner vest with a collar. The added leather piece on the mesh on the top as enough space to sew the hood right on. To create a clean look and seam, I lined up the bottom edge of the hood with the bottom edge of the leather piece on the vest. With right sides facing each other, I sewed the hood into place (make sure you pin and double check everything is lined up and you are sewing it all on correctly). Once it is secure, I think turned the hood upright as if the wearer is wearing the hood and added another seam just above the stitching you just did, about 1/4" above. This will enclose the raw edging of the hood as well as create a clean seam for when the hood is worn down, you can see the collar and no raw edges.
Make sure you go back and add in the rivets where they are needed/shown. I also added some bias tape along the front (where the zipper will be installed) and around the collar. I then added the heavy jacket zipper to the vest. I apologize for the lack of pictures for this part of the project. Every time I got something new sewn on, I would toss it onto the dress form to make sure it was still fitting to the measurements. I did have some issues with my machine not wanting to sew the stretch fabric nicely which is why I recommend the non stretch faux leather for this project.