Leather armor, the staple of rogues and rangers in fantasy settings, can take many forms. Sometimes it is heavily stylized with elaborate decorations, and sometimes it’s simplistic and functional. Leather armor isn’t just purely based on fantasy though, because there are records of leather being used as armor in the medieval ages.
Historically, leather armor closely followed the shape and form of the armor being used at that time. In other words, a leather breastplate would be made to look and fit as close as possible to a steel breastplate. That meant that it would fit the body of the wearer and would be able to move with their body, just as regular armor would.
Nowadays leather armor has been imagined in many different forms, and it no longer needs to conform to realistic expectations of movement or defense. Whether you want to make a leather armor costume for cosplay, LARP, or anything else, in this article I’ll go through how to make it fit your body and be comfortable to wear. I’ll make some comparisons to historical armor, but mainly just to make it look and feel more realistic.
This is not an article about how to make functional leather armor that will protect you from harm or combat. The leather that I use is chrome-tanned, not vegetable-tanned leather, and that means that it cannot be hardened. It is however very durable, flexible, and comfortable. Do not expect for the armor that I explain how to make in this article to protect you from anything.
Designing for Mobility
If you’re making an original piece of armor, then you have a lot more freedom with the design that if you’re trying to copy an existing armor. Sometimes the people who design leather armor for video games or TV shows give no real thought as to whether or not it would be comfortable to wear in real life.
A good example of this is when a breastplate extends past the natural waist of a person. Even when you use leather, if it extends to far down on the torso in one solid piece, then it becomes difficult to bend at the waist. This makes it uncomfortable to move around in and wear for long periods of time, which is essential if you’re going to wear the costume for any significant length. A good piece of armor should not restrict your movement very much if at all.
In historical torso armor, the breastplate would end at the natural waist of the person, and anything lower than that would be covered by smaller articulated plates. They would form sort of a skirt of plates that extended down usually to about the hips.
I’m not saying that you should design your armor exactly like the historical pieces, but I think it helps to take inspiration from them so that you end up with something that fits well and allows for good mobility. If we do that, then we see that it’s good to have a large chest portion of the armor that covers the rib cage, and then a more flexible and articulated area around the midsection. This allows us to design the breastplate however we want, and to cover the stomach area in any way that will let the wearer bend at the waist.
Drawing Up the Pattern
Now comes the tricky part of trying to get flat pieces of leather to fit the shape of the body. It’s possible to form one sheet of metal into a compound curve shape that fits around a person, but not with leather. Vegetable tanned leather could probably be molded into a breastplate using only a single piece, but because this article is about chrome-tanned leather, we’ll have to do things differently.
There are countless different ways you can design the breastplate, but essentially you just need a seam or two in there to give it a bit of a curve outward. This will let it fit your body better and also allow for a little bit of room for your chest and abdomen to expand when you breathe. It doesn’t need to stick out as much as historical armor did, because the flexible leather will bend and allow your chest to expand for breathing just by itself. Technically you could use just one piece to cover the upper body, but it would stick out in some places and not look or feel as good.
For my armor I chose to have a central upper piece, with two side pieces sewn onto it, and then one more piece in the middle to extend it a little further down. It’s a very simple design, but I find that it fits well and gives me good mobility. There’s a lot of room for alteration or customization if you want to change it up too.
To test the fit of your pattern before you cut the leather, you can cut it out of cardboard or paper and tape them together. This should let you see where the armor will sit on your body and if you need to make anything bigger or smaller. If you’re trying to recreate an armor from a game or movie, then you can use images from the source to draw out the patterns. In any case, it’s always better to make sure that it fits properly before you use up any of the final material. Also don’t forget to allow for enough material on the seams for the pieces to overlap.
Joining the Parts
There are pretty much two methods that you can use to join the leather pieces together, and those are sewing or riveting. Riveting is definitely faster, which is probably why you see it on a lot of cheaper fantasy leather armors that you can buy online. Personally I’m not a huge fan of the look of many rows of rivets on every seam, but if you like it then by all means use it, because it will save you a lot of time.
For sewing, it will probably have to be done by hand, unless you have a heavy duty sewing machine that can sew through leather. Hand-sewing also has the benefit of letting you use a much stronger stitch called a saddle stitch, which is what I used on my armor. It’s a very strong stitch that uses two needles that interweave through the leather, making a very strong and durable seam. I think it also gives a more subtle and detailed look to the seams as opposed to rivets.
Another benefit of hand-sewing is that you can control the tension of every stitch. This lets you tighten up the stitches in some areas, which will constrict the leather along that line and put a slight curve into the piece if you need to. If for instance one of the edges of your armor is curving outward where you don’t want it to, you can sew tightly along the edge and it should help to tighten it up.
Sewing leather by hand can take quite a bit of time, because you have to punch out every hole along the seam of each piece of leather before you start sewing. You also have to count the holes and make sure that you have the same number on each piece. If the holes don’t match up, then by the time you get to the end of the seam, you’ll have some empty holes on one of the pieces. To reduce the time, you can increase the distance between each stitch. So instead of sewing in quarter-inch increments, you could use half-inch spacing.
It helps to have some sewing needles that are specifically made for sewing leather. These have a much duller point so that they won’t get caught or poke through the leather where they’re not supposed to. They’re also a little bit bigger than normal needles, which is good because the thread is usually thicker too. For thread I like to use a waxed linen thread, but a thick thick synthetic thread could also work fine.
Adding Articulation
The lames that form the articulated fauld are really just strips of leather a few inches thick. The ones for my armor are very simple with just a single slight curve going along the length, but you can make them as decorative as you want to match the style of your armor.
The number of lames that you add can also vary. I went with just three lames because I found that that was enough to go from my waist to my hips, which is where I wanted the armor to end. You could make yours extend farther if you wanted to, or just make the lames thinner if you want more.
There is also the question of how to orient the lames. By that I mean which way they overlap. In a lot of historical examples, the lames of the fauld have the outside edges sticking up, which makes it much easier for the pieces to collapse down when the wearer bends at the waist. In modern fantasy designs though, the lames are often depicted with the outside edges pointing down, like shingles on a roof. Whether you decide to be more historically accurate or modern is up to you, but I think that the historical method articulates a bit easier.
Buckles and Straps
Generally, armor for the torso has straps that go over the shoulders and at the sides of the waist. How many straps you decide to put is up to you, and it also depends on how many parts you have on your armor. The width of the strap doesn’t need to be too thick either. I’ve found that just an inch wide or even less is just fine for straps.
To attach the straps you can once again either sew or rivet them in place. For such small parts, it makes more sense to just rivet them on. One quick rivet at the end of the strap is enough to hold it in place, as opposed to spending five or ten minutes sewing on each one. I sewed some of the straps onto my armor and soon decided to rivet the rest.
For the shoulder straps, you can attach two straps to both the front and the back so that you can adjust the fit. This also lets you take the front and back armor apart. Or, if you know that you’re never going to adjust the armor, you could just sew or rivet the straps permanently in place. The same goes for the side straps, except that one side will need to be left open so that you can get in and out of the armor.
To hold the lames of the fauld together and make them able to slide over each other, leather straps are fastened on the inside of the lames. About three straps is enough, for the center and the two sides, to hold them in place. Again, it’s much easier and faster to rivet the straps on. If you don’t like the look of a lot of rivets, then you can hide them underneath the area where the lames overlap.
There are different kinds of buckles that you can use to secure the straps, and it’s just a matter of personal preference really. Safety buckles are very popular, but I used D-ring buckles on my mine because I had some extra. I think that safety buckles are probably easier to fasten when you’re putting the armor on by yourself, but D-rings are manageable. Keeping one side always fastened makes it a lot easier and faster to put it on too.
One advantage of D-rings over safety buckles is that they can be a bit more finely adjusted than safety buckles. Safety buckles have to have holes punched out in the strap in increments, whereas D-rings can be secured at any point. It’s not a huge difference though, so it might not matter to you, but it’s something to think about.
Surface Decoration
Decorating the surface of chrome-tanned leather is a lot less intricate than with vegetable-tanned leather, because it can’t hold the tooling marks from chisels and stamps. You can still carve designs into it with gouges though, which is what I did on the edges of the pieces of my armor. I just put a simple line border around the edges, but you can get much more creative.
You can carve out designs onto the larger portions of the armor, or even attach other decorations onto it. To make a scale effect, you could cut out little pieces of leather and either sew or rivet them at the top of each piece onto the leather. You could also do that but with leaf or feather shapes to make a more forest or animal inspired armor.
The color of the leather itself can also be kind of a decoration. I went with just plain brown leather, but chrome-tanned leather comes in many different colors from the tannery, so you don’t need to dye it like vegetable-tanned leather. It can also be bought with much more vibrant colors than vegetable-tanned can be dyed with. That being the case, you can make armor of basically any color you can imagine. So if you want to make armor that looks like bright green leaves, you definitely can.
Conclusion
I hope that this article has given you some ideas or insight for how to make your own leather armor, whether it’s your own original design or a replica of an existing piece. If you only take one thing from this article, I hope it’s that you remember to make sure that your armor fits your body well and doesn’t restrict your movement too much. Armor is meant to be worn, and especially if you have to wear it for more than a few hours, comfort is key.