Home of the Sovereign Protectors

I have a 50% off coupon, and the red cotton velveteen from Joann's look pretty good to me. Before I jump in, do any more experienced souls have a reason not to? There's no burgundy available along with it.

http://www.joann.com/empire-velveteen-f ... 28531.html

Looks good.

You should be able to ask a manager to special order it for you. I know I have seen purple velvet in the wild.

I've ordered a couple of additional swatches. Meanwhile I've gotten myself on Q's kit list for the bucket and I'll see about draping a pattern for the outer robe. For the inner one, a normal thawb probably won't fit me well as I'm a pear shaped woman so I might end up with something looser than normal. Hoping I can make it fit smoothly without adding seams or darts, which is the normal prescription for this sort of thing.

The new swatches I ordered arrived and I'm very pleased. I've had a hard time getting a photo of them as the bright red photographs way too orange on my phone, which is my only photo option at the moment, but it is a bright, saturated lipstick red. They are the Kauffman Lush velveteens from fabric.com in Scarlet and Cabernet, and I mention them here because they're usually in stock: https://www.fabric.com/collection/kaufm ... -velveteen

Those choices will be fine.

Bucket arrived from Q - ~2 weeks for shipping from Australia to east coast US. Not bad! Now to figure out what I'm doing to assemble and prep. The newbie struggle is real. Fabric swatch isn't as pink in person, it's a true bright red. My phone hates red.

I based most of the work I did in my WIP thread on the first post he did using the brief description and pictures. It was also my first time, and was a little nerve-wracking until I got started. http://forcepike.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13494#p13494

If you use a dremel, don't use high speed or it'll melt the ABS (at least mine started to melt it). I used low speed with a cutting disc and it worked great. I started by cutting the stuff I knew was extra until I got the hang of it then moved into the more intricate parts, like the visor. Feel free to check out my WIP thread, and use the reference pictures. I've posted some updated pictures of the final helmet I just got back from the painter, so you can see the end-to-end process of how it turned out for me.

Thanks for the advice! Much appreciated. A TK from my garrison has offered to help me out as well.