Making Holsters

One of the biggest complaints you'll hear about some of the accessories made in the Steampunk genre is having to carry around these BFGs we've all made all day long at events. I wanted to be able to carry and show off the modded Nerf N-strikes my husband spent so much time on, but I needed my hands free for vending. So, holsters were made.

The materials:

Khaki canvas twill and corduroy



And for shaping, flexible cutting boards purchased at IKEA:



The black sheet, which I used for the backboard was just under 1/2cm in thickness, and the floral one, which backed the corduroy, was about 1-2mm.

We used cardboard for a pattern, of a similar give to the thinner cutting board:



A muslin mockup was made to check the fit:





A few tweaks were made, but on the whole the cardboard pattern was good, so on to the real materials:



We both noticed a similarity in the shape of this piece to a certain state in the union:



The corduroy was not an especially happy material to work with. The shredding and raveling was out of control. Every edge ended up being serged. I got the first one mostly assembled, then got punchy and went to bed and ended up not getting back to them until the Friday evening of Steamcon, so at this point the picture-taking ceased in my frantic last-minute efforts to get them done. I know none of you have ever been in this kind of situation ever before!

Loops were added to string over a belt, and straps added for the legs. The outer edges were finished with bias tape, as the joins got a bit messy. Here's the finished holsters:



Straps of the corduroy with heavy-duty hook and eyes in an antiqued finish were used to keep the guns from flopping about:





The belt loops:





I never really got a good shot of the whole outfit by myself, but this one with the family gives a fairly decent picture of how they wore: