Sunday, April 5, 2009

Space Helmet: The Eyehole Trim

I'm pretty much making up the design of this piece as I go along. When I found the helmet at the yard sale, I knew I wanted to copy the basic shape in leather, but beyond that I had no plans. Once I had stitched the leather pieces together and removed them from the helmet, I knew that I would have to reinforce all raw edges to keep it from being too floppy.



So today—besides antiquing the helmet and snout, and adding the required snaps—I made a trim piece to go around the eye opening. I gussied it up a bit to make it interesting, adding some cut outs, dyed it black and riveted it onto the helm. Sure enough, it reduces the flop factor.

When I add on the collar it should significantly help the helmet hold its shape.

5 comments:

  1. wow, what an incredible amount of work - so great to see the work in progress!

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  2. Was the trim piece wet-molded too?

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  3. Anvil, it wasn't going to be as it lays flat when wrapped around the helmet, but I cut it a little bit small, so I wetted it and stretched it as I riveted it down to fit.

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