The Armour Archive

I've been attempting to finish improvements to my kit in order to present myself as a combatant for the Combat of the Thirty. To that end I've been working on maille for my kettle helm but am nowhere near completing that on time. Instead, I am adding the padded liner for the maille in order to keep an appropriate appearance. The silhouette doesn't quite seem right however. I've posted links to the pictures below, any suggestions?

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Heya Daithi.

When I did my leather drape for my kettle helm, I found myself trimming back on the inital pattern as it was simply just too large and didn't "lay" correctly.

Maybe you're running into something similar in issue? Hard to tell.

It might take the mail's weight to pull that drape into line.

I see three angles to the general conical shape of your quilted drape/camail. There's a vertical part right up top, a steep slope in the middle and a less steep part down near your shoulders. I think the steep slope needs to be steeper, more like the vertical, so it eventually meets with the shoulder-cone part in a not-quite-L. This is for either shoulder, right and left sides of the drape. But the front and the back should be pretty much vertical all the way to the hem

Build it in tapered vertical sections, narrower end at the top, wider below. The parts that fall upon the shoulders get a flare-out about where your drape makes it to your shoulder line (the altitude where your trapezius muscles connect with your neck). They've tapered slightly from helmet brim down to shoulder, then they really spread out.

This should fit the drape to you and should do a pretty fair job of demonstrating you do indeed come with both a neck and a pair of shoulders, rather than the bulletlike silhouette you presently give.