Let me start off by saying that if you are making these for the purpose of getting into any Jedi costume club then these *should* fit the majority of the requirements but of course I cannot guarantee that. If you do end up making these pouches and they do get approved then I would LOVE for you to let me know. That would be truly awesome. The design of the pouches I made above is a replica of Anakin’s belt pouch from ROTS and that is the flavor of what we are making.
Ok, so this tutorial could literally be at least 30 pictures long or more so I did my best to cut it down a little and try and show the major steps, then I’ll explain quite a bit on what is going on in text. I do use a couple different pouches to show the steps but if I did a decent job it shouldn’t confuse you too much (I sincerely hope.)
Here's a brief supply list:
-Leather fabric (pleather and textured vinyl would probably work too I suppose)
-2mm craft foam from any craft store
-Super glue
-E6000 glue (really popular general use glue you can get anywhere)
-Magnets or Velcro for closure
-Paint to make the inner foam the same color
Tools:
-Scissors
-Hobby knife
-Wood burning kit (for design work)
First cut out a rectangle of 2mm craft foam that is 5 inches wide and 12.5 inches long. Ignore the fancy cut out design on the left side, we’ll talk about that later. These measurements are for making the larger pouches in my photos above, if you are making smaller ones simply trim off a few inches of the width.
Next measure 8.5 inches from the right side and mark it with a line. I mark the word “inside” of the pouch just so that I don’t get confused with what happens later, you can do that if you wish.
You’ll notice right by where I have it marked with arrows that the foam is cut in a little on the top and bottom along the line. It is trimmed by 2mm on the top and bottom down to the end of the foam with the “X’s” on the right side. We have to do this because when the leather is applied to the sides of the pouch later it will make it wider. It’ll make a little more sense later.
Time to place the piece of foam on your leather fabric, mark it, cut it out, then glue the two pieces together using some super glue.
Trim any excess leather off the edges and since they are now laminated together it will look relatively uniform like this. I use super glue because it bonds well, dries in about 7 seconds, and is liquid so it is easy to spread. At this particular stage you might have to go around the piece and make sure the edges are well glued down, sometimes they like to separate if no glue made it to the edges.
Trying to make those lined designs on the leather itself after you have constructed the entire thing is very difficult so if you want them, now is the time to do it. I use a chisel tip on a wood burning tool to make the lines. I noticed when I first did this that just holding the tip on the leather and trying to burn a line into it didn’t work at all because the leather had a sort of finish to it. I was able to remedy that by taking a hobby knife and a ruler and actually cutting the lines a little bit into the leather (not enough to go through all the leather and the foam beneath it, mind you.) This creates a channel with which you can run the wood burning tool through and the results were much better.
Continued in Part 2...