Home of the Sovereign Protectors

Hello all,

This will be the beginning of the long road to a completed TR-ROTS build.

Haven't bought anything yet, just spending the first few weeks doing a lot of research and bugging everyone who will listen to me.

First things first- I managed to find some crimson velvet in two shades at my local fabric supply store... CAD$49.99 for a meter. Yikes. Will have to time it right during a sale.

First shade:

Second shade:

Side-by-side:

Side-by-side swatches:

Any advice? How much should I budget to buy?

Thanks all!

I'm partial to the more 'red' one myself (the other being more orange-y).

RE: Price - Do some hunting online. I was able to go to Fabricana (which is apparently not in Kingston), and got my fabric for probably half that price. If you can ship to the border, there may be some people in the States who have an idea of which websites you can order from.

Helmets tend to run about $200ish (could be more than that... mine was $250 USD), but you can save a bit of money by buying an unfinished one; you'll likely have to repaint it to match your robes anyway.

Despite being a soft costume, this one isn't necessarily cheap.

Echo wrote:I'm partial to the more 'red' one myself (the other being more orange-y).

RE: Price - Do some hunting online. I was able to go to Fabricana (which is apparently not in Kingston), and got my fabric for probably half that price. If you can ship to the border, there may be some people in the States who have an idea of which websites you can order from.

Helmets tend to run about $200ish (could be more than that... mine was $250 USD), but you can save a bit of money by buying an unfinished one; you'll likely have to repaint it to match your robes anyway.

Despite being a soft costume, this one isn't necessarily cheap.

Thanks for the feedback! So you're talking about the darker one right?

I'm definitely going to have to shop around more- I've been pointed to some shops in the Montreal and Toronto areas that carry assorted fabrics. I'm going to check those out next.

I've been looking at the Buy-and-Sell boards and there are unfinished buckets there, though as a newbie I don't know the pros and cons of each material so Ill have to ask around about that a bit more.

Also being in Canada, you'll likely want to strongly consider Velveteen as it can be washed as most places that do dry cleaning won't take a custom garment... and it's usually priced at about $30 per metre instead of $50... so if you hit the right sale you can get that down to about $15 a metre

Yeah, I'm talking about the darker one. The bottom one with the two strips side by side.

Resin and fiberglass are heavier than ABS plastic. I have a resin one, and the other guard in my garrison has an ABS one. Other than that, the biggest difference is the size of the bucket. I think there are threads floating around with actual measurements.

Welcome and good luck as you start your journey! I found it better to take the helmet with as I was shopping for fabrics. You'll find that die lots vary wildly, even for the same fabric. Get the one that is closest to the helmet (in natural light). That way, hopefully you won't have to repaint.

I also second the velveteen choice.

The holidays are over and we're back on the road to Royal Guard glory!

I've decided to wait until I talk to a seamstress before I start looking at fabric. I want to get a good estimate on yardage and costs before I go order something.

In the meanwhile, I'm going to start looking at appendages- gloves and boots.

Gloves: I think I'm going to go with Imperial boots gloves once their shop opens. And while I was writing this post the store opened, so I took it as a sign of fate and purchased a pair of their guardian gloves: https://www.imperialboots.com/product/red-guard-3/ Can't wait!

Boots: A few days ago I went to our local surplus shop to see if I could find some acceptable boots. I took pictures to post here to get people's opinions:

Boot 1:


Boot 2:



Any of these any good? On closer look Boot 2 looks like it has some leather texturing, but is that enough to not make it CRL-approved?

Thanks all!

For the correct Boot for ROTS, The red suede is the way to go. IB does carry those in a combo with the gloves. Black boots where given as an option if a vender was not able to accommodate of persons foot size.

LuciousTalvloinne wrote:For the correct Boot for ROTS, The red suede is the way to go. IB does carry those in a combo with the gloves. Black boots where given as an option if a vender was not able to accommodate of persons foot size.

Just as a side-note (and hopefully to alleviate some confusion), the CRL says that the red suede is the optional choice, and black jackboots are the ones to look for.

Echo wrote:

LuciousTalvloinne wrote:For the correct Boot for ROTS, The red suede is the way to go. IB does carry those in a combo with the gloves. Black boots where given as an option if a vender was not able to accommodate of persons foot size.

Just as a side-note (and hopefully to alleviate some confusion), the CRL says that the red suede is the optional choice, and black jackboots are the ones to look for.

I'm looking at the CRL right now at http://databank.501st.com/databank/Costuming:TR_rots and it marks the black boots as optional.

LuciousTalvloinne wrote:For the correct Boot for ROTS, The red suede is the way to go. IB does carry those in a combo with the gloves. Black boots where given as an option if a vender was not able to accommodate of persons foot size.

I was planning to earmark the suede boots as a future upgrade to the kit. I chose the way of the black leather boot since, via personal experience it's really hard to find boots that will fit my feet while being wearable on the calf. Double the difficulty if done through online shopping. Plus budget was a concern (I want to set most of that aside for the robes and bucket) and I need a new pair of boots for non-troop use anyways, so I thought to kill two birds with one stone and go local.