Lots and Lots of Foam

(Some Cardassians, for your viewing pleasure!)

Another day, and I've managed quite a bit of progress on the armour for my Cardassian officer's uniform.

I started off cutting a new centre front panel out of foam. I had originally cut it out of two pieces, but after reading a neat tidbit online for creating ridges in foam, I decided that one piece was the way to go.


So, there's my centre front panel. (Looks like a steer head to me, but then, I am from Texas.)
The way to create the ridge down the centre is pretty simple. I first marked the centre with a sharpie so I'd have a guide. Then, I put a line of hot glue down the centre, where I'd marked. I folded the front piece in half, making sure everything was aligned correctly, and put a nice heavy textbook on top of it to give it a good bit of pressure while the glue was cooling. Once it was cooled, I could open the front panel back up and voila! A lovely ridge right down the centre!

There's the ridge. Pretty nifty, eh?

After I'd sorted out the front panel, I added the narrow strips along what's basically the bust seam, and then I added the side front panels.
It's starting to resemble Cardassian armour! Huzzah!
After all that, I decided that I needed a new neckline piece, since I'd cut that out in two sections before, and now I wanted the same nifty ridge in the centre of that one. So, I cut a new piece, made the centre ridge, and added the front neckline to my armour. Once it was attached, I cut out a diamond shape where the neckline and body meet at the centre front.
A dawdled around a bit after that, deciding how to make the outlines for the individual panels. I had meant to pick up some sort of rubber something or other to use, but had completely forgotten about it while I had been at Home Depot. I figured it out, though...I would just make ridges that I could glue on around the panels. I took a piece of scrap foam, laid a line of hot glue down, and folded it over. Once it cooled, I cut the ridge off of the scrap and glued it down along the panel edge. I repeated this until I had the entire neckline, including the diamond, outlined. The final finish to the neckline was to fit a piece of foam into the diamond cutout.


So far, so good! I'm quite pleased with how it's looking. Tomorrow, I'm going to finish outlining the front panels, add another layer of foam to the inside of the armour to give it more stability, and pattern the back. Hooray for progress!