Before I finished building my first set of Stormtrooper armor, I had always planned on building a Jawa. I mean, seriously, Jawas have fun anywhere they go! Here is how I made mine.
Cutting the Pattern Pieces
First, you’ll need to wrangle up some Monk’s Cloth fabric, at least six yards of it. Go with more just in case! I found pre-dyed Monk’s Cloth online (one less step, yay!) in the color Carob Brown. It’s difficult to find anymore. Closest thing to it now is Potting Soil, but it’s a bit darker than Carob Brown. Anyhow, measuring my height from my shoulders and my seam-to-seam length across my shoulders, I made a rough pattern and cut it larger than I thought I would need it. Always easier to hem than to add, right?
I traced the shape I wanted with tailor’s chalk, making sure that the fold was at the shoulders. Basically, the shape is straight along the sides at the top until a few inches below the armpits. From there, it flares out a bit to allow for good draping at the bottom. The skirt part of the robe should be in an A-line shape. Then I cut it all out with a cutting wheel. Easy!
All the pieces cut out and ready for sewing. The seam for the hood should run along the back only. The ties are thicker at the ends where they will attach to the hood, and narrower at the ends.
Note that you do not want to have a seam running along your shoulders! Seams are okay at the shoulders where the sleeves connect and running along the sides. You don’t want a seam in the back or front.
Making the Mask
For my mask, I picked up an assortment of different style masks: a costume hockey mask, simple eye masks, paper full face masks… but I ultimately chose a Batman half face mask that I snagged from Kroger for less than $5 at Halloween. I cut the ‘horns’ off so that the mask has more of a rounded shape. I removed the nose as well to allow for better air flow. And I opened up the eyes a bit as well so I could have a better field of view.
Then I took an extra hard hat liner I had from my first stormtrooper build and glued it inside the mask. It’s very comfy, secure, and provides a lot of support for everything!
Oh, and another very nice thing about the Batman mask is that there is plenty of room to install two fans (one on each side) on the cheeks. Sweet!
I hot glued two waterproof tea lights onto the mask. I wired some LEDs in the mask later, but if you don’t like to deal with soldering electronics, then the LED tea lights work great! Below you can see examples of the lights off and on.
There were parts that were sticking up in the back of the hard hat liner. So I used duct tape to secure it all down.
Then I put all the hood pieces together. I used speaker cloth to line the hood and also for my mask cover. This is before adding the coaxial cable in the front, so the shape is kind of sloppy in this state!
Next, I glued on some cheap plastic domes after painting the inside with alcohol ink and stuffing a bunch of butterscotch candy wrappers inside. The domes I’m using in the photos are from cheap toy machines you see at the market. (My kids’ dentists offices has these type of machines, and they give the kids tokens for the machines once they are finished with their checkups. Needless to say, we have a lot of these plastic domes around the house!)
The color of the lit eyes is amber, but they show up as yellow on my camera.
I cut out the speaker cloth just enough to allow the eyes to protrude through. I then secured the speaker cloth to the domes with a very small amount of hot glue. I didn’t want the glue or how it attached to the domes be too apparent.
Detailing the Mask
Next, I sewed in a wired cable to the front edge, which improved the shape of the hood opening. However, I didn’t like how floppy it still was. The front of the hood shouldn’t dip down over the face. It’s easy to see how the weight of the cable was pulling down the front of that hood. I needed to fix that!
I added some velcro to the inside top of the hood and top of the mask to help, but it was no use. Even with the hood velcroed to my mask, the hood still liked to shift down a bit and obscure my vision. Annoying! I found some heavy fabric stabilizer from another costume build in my supplies and thought that it might help to give the hood a better form. It sticks to fabric when you iron it on. I chose to iron it to the inside lining, not the monks cloth.
Yay, it worked! Here you can see the hood before adding the stabilizer on the left, and after adding the stabilizer on the right.
So you can see a bit of the profile and the back ties.
And while I like the newer ‘stable’ hood more than the previous version, it looks too ‘perfect’ to me. Since the photos were taken, I’ve crumpled up the hood a bit, which has creased and wrinkled the stabilizer inside of it. It looks much better now, and still prevents the hood from dipping near the front.
Here is a short test video showing how it all looked. I still needed to adjust the velcro connections of the hood and mask, so you can see it’s still shifting forward a little too much.
Testing It All Together
I had already sewn my robe together, so I figured I would throw it all on and show my hubby my creation. The robe and sleeves were still too long, and I didn’t have my gloves or boots, but it was super exciting getting it all on! He was so impressed that he pulled out his camera. And I embraced my inner jawa…
After trying on the robe, it was apparent that I needed to hem the sleeves and overall length of the robe. In fact, I ended up removing a lot more than what is in the photo below from the bottom of the robe! Thankfully, I was able to use all that extra fabric removed for my boots. (Note: don’t throw away the scraps!)
How to Make the Edge Fringe
Once you get the sleeves and end of the robe the lengths you want, you’ll need to fringe out the edges. Monks cloth can come apart really fast if it’s not secured down in some way. To make a fringe that stays put without all the fabric unraveling, I began by making a zig zag stitch all along the areas that need fraying (bottom of the robe, ends of the sleeves). Once the stitching was done, I pulled out enough of the material strings to make a few centimeters of fringe. Easy!
Making the Boots
Next I tackled my boots. I found some inexpensive Ugg-type boots on Amazon for somewhere around $10. To make these, I simply used the extra cloth scraps from trimming and hot glue. I began my wrap at the bottom of the toe, wrapping upwards, securing the strips as they overlapped.
I tried to add a little bit of natural fringing and patch spots to make it look a little less “perfect”.
A comparison of a completely wrapped boot next to an untouched one.
Lastly to protect the wraps from coming apart, I completely covered the bottoms with Shoe Goo. One entire tube per shoe! Application tip: Shoe Goo applies kind of sticky if you’re using a piece of wood to smooth it on. To get it to apply nice and evenly- and with a bit of a smooth finish- use an ice cube to smooth things out! I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t tried it. Ice works great!
I can confidently attest to the fact that the Shoe Goo holds up beautifully on these boots. I have trooped in them many, many times- in rain, heat, you name it!- and I have not once had to touch up the soles of these boots yet. They still are going strong!
An Extra Little Project
While cleaning up my sewing area (fraying Monk’s cloth is messy business!), I discovered a large piece of scrap Monk’s cloth leftover from my initial costume cutting. It was long- about 80 inches or so- and about 18 inches across at the widest point where it folded, narrowing a bit at the other ends. I looked at it for a few minutes, and then I had an idea. This would make a perfect Jawa bag!
I left the fold at the bottom, and sewed up the sides about 18 inches or so. The long parts of the straps were sewn together at the ends. I zig zag stitched along the lengths of the straps and fringed them. And here’s the result!
It’s just the right size to stash goodies to trade with Imperial Citizens. Or to hide an acquired droid part or two.
Weathering the Bandoliers
I found some new leather bandoliers over on eBay, and they were perfect. But they looked too perfect! I forgot to take ‘before’ pics, but I assure you, these looked super shiny and brand-spankin’-new. I used a combination of acetone with 100 grit sandpaper to rough up the surfaces. My kids were eager to help me sand the leather. It’s nice to have some hands-on assistance! 😉 They were a huge help. Then to help protect the leather, I rubbed everything down with leather conditioner when finished.
It wasn’t enough to just have them look old, I wanted them to look dirty. So off we went to the only part of our lawn that has no grass. My kids had a blast stomping and rubbing these bandoliers into the dirt.
Weathering the Robe and Boots
With the bandoliers done, I went to weathering the robe and hood with paint. I used a textured spray paint for my weathering (Rustoleum Carribean Sand and Rustoleum Rustic Umber), and I really love it. It not only adds sandy color, but also sandy, dirty texture to the fabric. It really is covered in sand now! For the boots, I focused primarily on where I thought the boots would get the most dirt and sand.
And then I tackled the robe. I had a difficult time getting the images to accurately show the weathering, but this is as good as I could get it at that moment. What shows up as white is really a sandy color.
With all of that weathering done, I had photos taken to submit to the 501st Legion and Rebel Legion. Yes, this character is eligible for both organizations!
And then some fun!
Utto nye usabia atoonyoba?
Fine Tuning the Fit
After looking at the pics, I noticed that the sides of my robe were longer than the front and back. That’s because I cut straight across the bottom of the robe. When the robe hangs naturally, the edges end up longer. Hanging off a hanger, I made rough lines with tailor’s chalk to estimate where I needed to trim the bottom in order for the robe to fall evenly along the bottom.
Then I went further and added pins along where it looked like the bottom of the robe should be modified. This took a little time to get right. I was trying to keep things even with the center of the robe.
And ended up with the bottom looking like this.
Then I made a zig zag stitch along where the pins were located, and frayed to that stitch. Which made things look like this:
The fraying isn’t even along the bottom, but I don’t mind at all. It won’t be all that visible, actually. What’s important is that the robe falls evenly along the bottom now, which looks a lot better! Here’s a before and after of the robe while hanging:
There was a fold line down the front and in the middle of the Monks cloth that was making me crazy. I didn’t notice how prominent it was until after we’d taken the photos. I ironed it down really well, but it still came back. Then I applied extra heavy starch to it (from the inside), and ironed the heck out of it again. Which worked for about 5 minutes, then the fold came back. It’s like a horror movie: “The Return of the Monk’s Cloth Fold”! The only areas that didn’t show the fold were where I had applied a heavier coating of paint/weathering. So I took it outside and added more weathering along the fold lines in the front and back. Here’s how it turned out:
The fold is still hiding in there, but it’s under much more control now. Not nearly as visible as it once was. It won’t drive me as crazy as it did before, that’s for sure!
Jawa Transport
One of my Garrison mates found a really small bin on wheels for their Jawa, so I had to get one, too. It’s perfect for everything and takes up very little space! I found mine at Home Depot. It’s called a 25 in. Cantilever Mobile Job Tool Box. It’s got lots of storage for little repair items, too!
Detailing the Gloves
I worked on v2.0 of my gloves today. These are much more comfortable than my last ones, and I think they look a little more like the screen jawa hands (although not perfect!). Here’s a screen shot with some hand detail:
I found some longer craft fur at JoAnn’s and sewed it on just the back part of the hands. I sprayed these with flat black paint to reduce any shine in the fur and make it look more animal-like. It also helps to mat up the fur a bit and reduce shedding.
I will probably thin out the fur a bit more, but I’m much happier with these over my previous gloves.
Fast forward two years, and I bought my Jawa to DragonCon. I met up with this R2-D2 droid while I was there, but I swear that I didn’t swipe any of its missing parts!
