Recreating the Fellowship 6

For the jerkin I took a pattern from alley cat scratch and hand sewed a combination of deer hide and calfskin with a sinew thread that came prewaxed. For the finished edges I used a combo of rubber cement to hold in place then (using regular black thread) again hand sewing them in place. The sewing would've been a lot shorter had I a sewing machine that could handle leather.

The belt was fun Just bought your standard extra long belt from Tandy Leather, used a tooler for the lines and triangles, then a (funny) part of a screwdriver and a mallet for the circles- oh and some dye to match the brown.

I hand made the pouch and the stone sharpener pouch last minute. The ties down the from I hand braided from leather you can find at any craft store.

The bow I got off eBay and stained darker- It was old and is just for show. I did hand make about six arrows- not the shafts but the fletchings and color (dye). The quiver was originally a hip quiver I just made a few additions so as to hold the bow and it worked out fine.

The glove was interesting- unsew a glove, had stitch a leather patch and  resew the glove- and you're done.

I am a beginner, so it's a bit rough, but I'm very proud of it, and plan on making Christmas presents for my other Ren Faire friends based on what I've learned.

Okay, so I dragged my boyfriend to the Halloween store to pick out a costume, and I planned on encouraging whatever he picked out because it's like pulling teeth to get him to do the "fairy" stuff that I like. He picked Aragorn and though I was thrilled (my name is Bree- because my mom loved reading Lord of the Rings so much!) I was disappointed with the lack of authenticity of the costume. The tunic was fine, and the boot covering things were cool, but the cape was cheapy looking and there were no accessories that were on the model on the cover of the costume packaging. I knew I could improve it. The first and easiest thing I did was buy the Elven leaf clasp, Arwen's necklace, and Arathorn's ring from eBay. I had arm gauntlety like things from an old Ren Faire purchase, and since they tie up, it was easy enough to expand them for his arms. We found plenty of swords at the Halloween store, but they all had black plastic stupid looking blades. A trip to Home Depot to buy a can of metallic grey spray paint fixed one up nicely. I found a good old leather belt at a thrift shop to hold the sword. To make it look less like a belt, I removed the buckle tong, cut off the portion that had loop holes, and blackened the cut edge with a Sharpie to make it consistent with the rest of the border. I looked the longest for the fingerless glove on Aragorn's right hand. I didn't want to spend money on a real pair of leather gloves I was just going to destroy, and the day before the party we had to go, I found a $3 pair of gardening gloves in CVS that were nice and ridgy on the palm side. I simply put the left glove on his right hand to get the right consistency on the outside. That very day I also got a Jesus wig and a travel size 99 cent bottle of hair gel. Discarding the Jesus beard, using the entire bottle of gel on the wig to make it look more greasy and less poofy, and cutting the front lengths to make the hair more naturally uneven, and we had Aragorn's head. Normal black shirt, pants and shoes worked fine.