Darth Vader – Rebels

Darth Vader from Star Wars: Rebels, made for Dragoncon 2023

Chase really wanted a new Vader costume and when a Rebels group started to come together, it was a great opportunity to do that variation.

He bought the belt and belt boxes, and 3d printed the shinguards, chest armor, codpiece and helmet. I made the soft parts. The main cape was his original Vader cape from 2006 – I replaced the peeling pleather collar piece with new pleather. The inner robe is made out of some black poly fabric I bought for another project but didn’t use – worked perfectly for this. I used a robe pattern just to get the basic shape. The edges are pressed over and hand-finished.

The top and pants I made of pleather, with a cotton lining and a batting interior. I think we ended up using 3 layers of quilting batting in between to get the look we wanted? I got the basic shapes of the shirt, sleeves and pants cut of all layers, and then used a ruler to draw chalk guidelines onto the cotton lining layer. I pinned all of the layers together, and then followed by chalk guidelines to create the quilting stitches. Once each piece was finished, I sewed them together, and finished the edges by hand. The back of the shirt and the back of the pants from about mid-thigh up are mesh to try to keep them cooler.

He has some updates he wants to do so watch this space.