Middle Earth Ranger Forum

Don't know if this should go here in soft kit or not, but McCall's/Butterick has a few of their making history patterns on sale for anyone that needs things like pouches and whatnot, I'm going to be getting all of them since at 2.50 US a piece that's not a bad deal at all. https://butterick.mccall.com/b5936 here's one of them as an example.

Nice! Thanks for the heads-up!

Ken

no problem, I bought all of the pouches and bags like that they had on sale plus an archer/forester type costume and it came to about 20 total with shipping which is quite reasonable I think. now to get some nice leather for the leather goods and perhaps some of that silk from the website Manveruon posted...I'll have to wait really, though until I have the physical patterns in hand to order fabric. leather I can buy a little easier though, since I don't need to make all the pouches right away, even if I'll end up doing so.

Elwindil wrote:no problem, I bought all of the pouches and bags like that they had on sale plus an archer/forester type costume and it came to about 20 total with shipping which is quite reasonable I think.

That sounds very reasonable! Would you mind letting us know how the patterns/instructions are? I've bought some commercial patterns that had some awful instructions - either they were poorly explained or just had some bizarre ideas about how the garment/item should be assembled.

sure thing, I think it said around a week maybe less. so that's fairly reasonable shipping time. only trouble is the sale ends tomorrow, so I won't have them before that for those of you who were interested in them.

I do most of my garb/kit stuff in the winter time, please post pics when you can!

Ken

Elwindil wrote:sure thing, I think it said around a week maybe less. so that's fairly reasonable shipping time. only trouble is the sale ends tomorrow, so I won't have them before that for those of you who were interested in them.

There will be other sales, or if you think one is really excellent, you can let us know if it's worth paying the regular price!

Taurinor, will do. Ken, I think doing your kit in the winter months makes sense, as historically that's when folks would've done that sort of thing any way, because there's more time to make and repair things like clothing, etc. From what I could see of the pictures on the website, most of the patterns seem to be sturdy in design, but that's something for when I actually have the physical copies to decide. I'll try and figure out how to post pictures from my cell to my laptop, I think I've got a cable around that will sync them up somewhere. I've got a knife that I want to do a review on that I bought from MRL, it's a nice dirk so basically a short sword. Just no clue on how to get decent quality pictures with a cell phone, but I'm resourceful and I'll figure it out...eventually.

Looking forward to seeing your results! And also, if I may offer another suggestion for fabric, check out www.fabrics-store.com for some excellent prices on some really great linen. The stuff from Silk Baron is gorgeous, but for myself at least, I would probably want to have a layer between it and my skin, just to keep the silk clean since it's difficult to wash, and linen makes a wonderful under-layer. I've been extremely satisfied with everything I've gotten from them so far.

Manveruon wrote:I've been extremely satisfied with everything I've gotten from them so far.

That's good, considering you're practically their poster-child on Facebook!

Taurinor wrote:

Manveruon wrote:I've been extremely satisfied with everything I've gotten from them so far.

That's good, considering you're practically their poster-child on Facebook!

Hah, ain't that the truth.

the yeoman/robin hood type outfit has a shirt, vest, pants and hat, I'm thinking that the vest I can do out of leather, it would look rather nice over some linen or wool trousers and a linen shirt. the hat I won't use because I'll be eventually making a cloak or saving up to buy one of the licensed fellowship cloaks. plus, I think the hat just looks silly. I have a baldric that I purchased from MRL a while back that I can use to hang the beast of a sword from my profile photo, it's a discontinued model from their wheel of time series that is rather light and surprisingly agile even with my poor skills from lack of use and arthritis. eventually I'll get back into a more proper shape, because while round is indeed a shape, it is not the proper one for a human.

For what it's worth, you can get a lot of standard medieval (ish) patterns free - you just need to scale them yourself. Since they tend to be quite simple in cut, that's no problem. You'll of course want to get some cheap muslin to do a practice garment first to check the fit.

Caedmon has a very nice writeup of a tunic:
http://middleearthrangers.org/forum/vie ... 29&p=37894

And cloak:
http://middleearthrangers.org/forum/vie ... =25&t=1632

Trousers can be a bit complicated to do a period correct fashion if you're just getting started, but simple ones are stupid easy:
http://www.dagorhir.com/index.php/getti ... ith-gusset

A WETA Aragorn-ish jerkin is mostly just some rectangles with arm holes:
http://www.alleycatscratch.com/lotr/Hum ... Jerkin.htm

thanks Elleth, I'll take a look at those. I just couldn't pass up the pattern at 2.49 when it was regularly in the 15 dollar range. all four of the ones I got were somewhere in the 10-15 dollar range, so to get them for just shy of 20 was too good to not get on. I've done a lot of repair work by hand on things like shirts and pants, but I'm not adventurous enough to tackle hand sewing whole outfits yet, though I'll most likely need to do that with the leather I imagine. still, tandy leather has some nice whole hides and there's a store close to where I live, so I could get in there on a weekend and do some wishlisting.

patterns got here today, took a look at the instructions and they seem to be rather simple to follow, clear and concise in how to make everything which is good for me since I've only done repairs and that's about it. going to tackle it all just as soon as I can, possibly work on some of it this winter if I'm able to.