Arsenal Cosplay: Quiver and Shoes

In my last post I talked about my shoes for Arsenal. They're not exact, and therefore need to be modified. And no archer is complete without a quiver.

Shoes:
Let's first discuss the shoes. Originally the shoes I purchased had white soles and a black tongue. Roy's shoes have a red tongue and red soles.

That being said, it's time to break out the paint. For the soles, I mixed a little bit of Americana acrylic paint in "Lamp (Ebony Black)" with "True Red" and painted away, being careful not to paint the little black line in the middle. It took about two layers. I was originally going to color the shoe black with a marker, but in the end you couldn't even tell that it was black or blue so I decided to just keep them blue.

Original sneakers with white soles

Sneakers with one layer of the sole painted

Details of the sole

 

Next was changing the tongue from blue (or I guess we're going with black) to red. I found some scraps of red felt in my fabric stash and it really matched the interior of the shoe perfectly. I traced the shape of the tongue onto some paper and then onto to the felt and cut out two pieces, slightly larger than the paper pattern.

Paper pattern of the sneaker's tongue

I then pinned the felt in place, folding in a 1/4" so that it would have clean edges.

Pin the felt into place

Folding in the felt 1/4" will give a cleaner appearance

Now all you have to do is sew along the tongue of the shoe. Lastly, lace up your sneakers (I bought an 8 pack of black laces from the Dollar Tree) and you're done!

Quiver:

Ahh the quiver, probably the thing I'm most proud of at this point. Originally I was just going to use a poster tube with arrow tips glued to the top so that I could tote around my posters and other swag from the exhibit hall. Delving into my research, I found that Arsenal's quiver is shaped a little more elaborately than a cylindrical tube.

Here we see Arsenal's quiver having more curve at the opening. When I was browsing at Goodwill, I thought purchasing a leather jacket to use for material would be cheaper than buying leather at the craft store ($9.99). Taking a closer look, I saw my quiver...in the jacket sleeve.

The sleeve of the jacket was the perfect shape for the quiver

I cut off the sleeve and also cut out a circle of leather about the size of my poster tube top. I then sewed the circle onto the thinner part of the sleeve (where your hand would be). 

Sew a leather circle onto the bottom of the sleeve

The lining was separating from the leather. I stuck two large pieces of craft foam in between the leather and the lining so that it would hold its shape better. I then folded down the edge over the lining and sewed it shut.

Place craft foam in between the leather and lining to add support.

 

You should be left with something like this:

If you look at the reference photo, Roy has a red piping on his quiver. I purchased some red suede cord from Hobby Lobby ($2.99) and laid out my design and taped it to the quiver. I tried sewing the suede on, with no luck. Same goes for hot glue. Fabric glue seems to be the only thing that can hold the suede down. Glue down your suede, careful not to get glue on other parts of the quiver because it will dry shiny, and tape down as you go so it can dry. (* Tip: you may want to place something round in your quiver so it holds its shape while you glue)

Adding something cylindrical to the quiver will help with the gluing process

Let's move onto the back strap. In my first post, I drew out a sketch of the back strap based on the reference photo above. It's kinda like a curved x shape with two straps. I created a paper pattern of the x and cut it out of leather and craft foam. I then sewed along the edges of the x leather shape to give it a finished look. Taking Velcro, I placed the spikey side facing against the x (so that the smooth side will be on the outside) and sewed a strip on the top two arms on the x. Then I took the soft side facing up and sewed the strips onto the bottom arms of the x. Finally, glue the foam onto the back of the leather. Take two large buckles (47 mm, 2 for $1.99) and slide them onto the top spikey straps.

Finished back strap. The Velcro is sewn between the leather and the foam

Now we had to come up with a way to secure the quiver to the back strap and also support whatever weight we put in it. I bought some giant snap buttons (1 3/16", 2 for $2.99) and measured the width of the quiver. I used that width to attach the bumpy surface of the snaps to the X back strap at an angle so that the quiver would tilt. I then got my sister to place tape onto the quiver while it was held up to my back so I could sew on the other (flat) halves of the snaps. 

 

The snaps work beautifully and are concealed! It tilts slightly to the right like Roy's and can hold up quite a bit of weight. Place a circular piece of Styrofoam at the bottom of the quiver and its done! Now all it needs are some arrows.

Next on the blog...weapons!