How to sew a Jedi Knight costume - Episode 4 (tabards and sash)

We've made significant progress and the hardest part is behind us. Now we'll move on to sewing the tabards and the sash, which are those typical rectangular strips of fabric on (almost) every Jedi.

Measuring

For the tabards and sash, you'll need fabric in your chosen color, and most importantly, it must be long enough. The tabards must lie just below or exactly at the bottom hem of the outer tunic when worn. On the back, they can end behind the sash or at the bottom hem of the outer tunic.

What does that mean in practice?

My friend Jirka chose an outer tunic length of 96 cm. This means the tabards must be 2 x 96 cm long – the total length of the tabards is therefore 192 cm. The width of the tabards is a bit trickier. Tabards should be "proportional to the body." You can interpret that term however you like, so I personally follow this rule: a person 160-170 cm tall will have a tabard width of 11-13 cm. A person 170-190 cm tall will have a tabard width of 14-16 cm. I chose 15 cm for Jirka.

The obi belt sits on top of the sash. It's made of leather, and we'll talk about it in the next episode. The sash should reveal 5 cm of its material above and below the obi belt. See the image.

Cutting the fabric and sewing

At this stage, cut out 3 rectangles:

Tabard 2x

Sash 1x

Try not to forget the 2 cm for seam allowances. Later, when we sew the tabards and sash together, we will use 1 cm on the bottom and top sides to achieve the desired width without losing anything extra.

As you are used to from me, I work almost exclusively with fabric folded in half. Keep this in mind when preparing your pattern for the tabards and sash. This image can help you again.

If you are making a pattern for the tabards out of parchment paper first, draw a rectangle with dimensions – in our case 16x194 cm. Then place it on a folded, adequately long piece of fabric (the top part of the pattern touches the fold) and cut it out. This will give you a rectangle of 32x194 cm.

Work the same way for the sash.

Sash - sewing

Tabards - sewing

With that, we have finished all the textile parts of the Jedi costume, and the finished product should look something like this. 🙂

I hope what we created here was at least somewhat understandable.

This is my third Jedi costume. The total creation takes about 2 days, so it can easily be whipped up at the last minute for Halloween or an event. If you are extra productive and have a whole day free, it can be sewn in about 15 hours. But I don't recommend doing that. 😄 You make unnecessary mistakes if you aren't focused enough.

But our journey doesn't end with these textile parts. There are 2 more episodes to go! We'll talk about how to make a Jedi Knight belt and what we'll need for it. In the last episode, I'll explain how a Jedi costume should be worn, what to avoid, and how to take the right photos for approval if you are interested in becoming an official member of the Czech Rebel Legion.

author Eva Lassler

List of episodes:

1. Preparation
   
2. Pattern and sewing
   
3. Outer tunic
   
4. tabards and sash