Thanks for all the lovely comments and tips!
Phew! I've been away from the forums for quite a while, but rest assured, I'm staying active in the local clan chats and chipping away at my kit. I think it's about time I shared my kama progress.
To recap, a character I'm taking inspiration from is Altaïr. One of my absolute favorite parts of his uniform is the lower shape of the tunic, so I used the general shape for my kama base.
The first step is to pattern it out. I measured my waist, where the sides will be, and how much I wanted to cover in the front. There's nothing in the CRLs against a kama wrapping the whole way around, but since I'm doing thigh and shin armor, it would be best to open the front more to make the plates visible. Since the front flaps are pretty narrow, I found I needed to shorten the length of the kama or else the proportions looked strange. I had to cut and tweak a few of these before I settled on one I liked.
(Bonus: Successfully turned kama template into a cat bed!)
(Yes, this is patterned from a gigantic roll of pattern paper a vod brought to an armor party. Yes, we are all extremely jealous. No, I'm afraid they do not know where to buy it -- it will be a very sad day when this roll runs out!)
Once I got a good base, I had to decide on a pattern for the panels to cut out. I sketched out a few on my phone before deciding on one.
Now, time to cut fabric! I decided to use the same canvas as my flak vest, and two layers for durability. This probably won't flow as beautifully as Altaïr's, but it'll match my kit better. If the stiffness drives me crazy, I may remake it in the future, but for now I have to get going with my build.
Typically, I would sew the whole garment together first and THEN add decorative topstitching. However, since I want to add chainmail panels in the sides, I couldn't add decorative stitching that way without sewing the hole shut. I opted to do the detail stitching on each panel individually before sewing them together. Sadly, my concerns about this method were realized: the spacing of the detail stitching is inconsistent... oh well. Perfectionism is the death of progress, so I'll keep it as is.
For the front flaps, I decided on a Fennec-Shand-style detail panel. I usually backstitch my thread to keep it from unravelling, but since the backstitching would be very visible here, I took some tips I learned from
Falke's thread and used a hand needle to move all threads to the back and tie them off individually. It's tedious, but it looks great!
Underside complete!
Topside complete!
After flipping it inside out, it was comically puffy! Looked better after ironing it flat.
Added a velcro attachment under the sash, and voila!
A quick pic thrown together the second it was done, featuring some stolen gear...
Gotta spray some watered down acrylics to match the rest of the kit!
Not super thrilled with how bunchy it is -- the stiff canvas doesn't handle curves or turn inside out very well. I'll keep working with it and seeing how flat I can get it.
Well, that's it for now! The next soft goods will be pouches and possibly a custom belt. I'm shifting focus to the hard goods thread for now -- time to get some plates done!
