The Grey Warden (Part 2- The Tabard)

I'm working on this project from the inside out, so the shirt was first, and now the tabard. Overall, this is going to be a very thick and heavy piece of gear, so I've gone my best to reinforce when possible. To review, these are the things that need to be done for the tabard:

Tabard:

• Muslin mock-up

I made tabard shape the same way as the shirt, meaning, I measured roughly how wide I thought the tabard should be, measured roughly how long it should be by holding it at my shoulder and lowering the measuring tape until it hit where I wanted on my knees, and calling that good. The angle at the bottom was achieved by printing out and cutting a protractor, and straight-up measuring it. I literally eyeballed it, and then rounded to the nearest nice number, meaning, it ended up being 30 degrees. The fabric I was using was a bit too short, so I had to sew on some more for the 40 inches that I needed to reach my knees.
• Cotton
• Cut the shape and iron onto interfacing

This is a shot after it has already been ironed on, you can kind of see it peeking out. I had some issues with getting the cotton to be exactly flat, so if you look very closely, you can see some wrinkles. They will be covered in the end, so I'm not terribly worried about them.
• Cut out the straps

Before I did this step, I did a variety of tests to see what would be the best width for everything. And how the scales would look/hang. These are very tiny examples, just so that I could confirm the perfect distance between each of the channels, and whether the blue cotton would hide all the supporting marine vinyl. I'm still using dark blue vinyl, so that it blends with the rest of what I'm doing. The distance between the two vinyl straps ended up being 1.75" and the distance between scales going up is .75".
• Marine vinyl
• Cut out the straps

A shot of all the straps cut out. It made for an interesting pile.
• Temp attach the center line
• Mark all parallel lines
• Temp attach
• Sew on at least half inch from edge

The white roll in the center is what I used to hold the straps in place as I sewed, because the thickness of the vinyl would distort my lines if I used proper pins. That's something I learned from the mini-tests that I did. You can find the tape in the sewing section of a major craft store. It is used to hold patterns in place while tracing. That roll has 10 yds. Also, highly recommend denim thread and a denim or leather needle. They are the only things strong enough to hold everything together, especially when I add the chainmaille.
• Canvas/cloth
• Cut out the straps
• Wrap cotton around the canvas, iron into place, pin
• Temp attach the lines
• Sew on at least half inch from edge
• Holes for the chainmail
• Try to tuck them under the blue straps a bit
Here are some progress shots of after everything has been sewn on:
To show how the holes are tucked under the cotton, so they don't show.
Also, some shots of a test case I made to see how the chainmaille would look when I attach it to the holes:

• Sew the two pieces together
• Extra stitching on shoulders so that the fabric lies in one direction
• Felt backing
• Cut the felt backing to be one piece

You can see the felt backing peeking out a little bit, but this is the front, just before I sew on the edge binding and add the chainmail:

• Chainmail
• Binding
• 1.5” wide bias tape from the blue cotton, because of thickness 

Stick a fork in me, I'M DONE!!!!

On to the pants! And the breastplate!